Starship Asterisk*

mjimih wrote:
Does it look like a ghost? uh sort of I guess. how did it get it's name?

• • The Tempest Act 2, Scene 2
  CALIBAN: These be fine things, an if they be not sprites.
  • That's a brave god and bears celestial liquor.
  • The Comedy of Errors Act 2, Scene 2
  DROMIO OF SYRACUSE: This is the fairy land: O spite of spites!
  • We talk with goblins, owls and sprites:
    If we obey them not, this will ensue,
    They'll suck our breath, or pinch us black and blue.

Chris Peterson wrote:

neufer wrote:
I personally would never accuse Chris of being condescending
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CONDESCENDING, Yielding to inferiors; courteous; obliging.
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Quite so, I never feel obliged to yield to my inferiors (although I try to be polite). But you've provided an incomplete definition; my dictionary includes: to assume an air of superiority. I suspect that's the meaning David was seeing in my choice of words.

As an educator, I sometimes tread a fine line between assuming an air of superiority in a positive way, as we expect from a teacher, and coming off as a condescending jerk. Honestly, I never intend to sound like the latter, but as David quite correctly pointed out, in the absence of face-to-face communication, it can sometimes be difficult to read intent.

• So... how high is Chili

neufer wrote:I personally would never accuse Chris of being condescending :!:
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CONDESCENDING, Yielding to inferiors; courteous; obliging.
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DavidLeodis wrote:

Chris Peterson wrote:

DavidLeodis wrote:
You state Chris "These sprites are produced by thunderstorms that are a few hundred miles away- typically, over the horizon. If that isn't seeing a storm from the side, I don't know what is!". I did not know, which is why I was trying to seek help which you have given but I did not need what seems to be the condescensive tone.

Sorry, there was no intent to be condescending at all. The sentence was intended to be purely exclamatory.

Thanks Chris for your kind apology, which is appreciated. I do realise that without face to face contact it can be easy to create a wrong impression of what is being said.

Chris Peterson wrote:

DavidLeodis wrote:Thanks neufer and Chris for your replies.

You state Chris "These sprites are produced by thunderstorms that are a few hundred miles away- typically, over the horizon. If that isn't seeing a storm from the side, I don't know what is!". I did not know, which is why I was trying to seek help which you have given but I did not need what seems to be the condescensive tone.

Sorry, there was no intent to be condescending at all. The sentence was intended to be purely exclamatory.

DavidLeodis wrote:Thanks neufer and Chris for your replies.

You state Chris "These sprites are produced by thunderstorms that are a few hundred miles away- typically, over the horizon. If that isn't seeing a storm from the side, I don't know what is!". I did not know, which is why I was trying to seek help which you have given but I did not need what seems to be the condescensive tone. :(

DavidLeodis wrote:Nobody has queried this so I may be the only person that was surprised by the statement in the explanation that "Red sprites take only a fraction of a second to occur and are best seen when powerful thunderstorms are visible from the side." (my bold text). I've never realised that thunderstorms have a side, though I've probably also never given it any thought! :o

DavidLeodis wrote:
I may be the only person that was surprised by the statement in the explanation that "Red sprites take only a fraction of a second to occur and are best seen when powerful thunderstorms are visible from the side." (my bold text). I've never realised that thunderstorms have a side, ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderstorm wrote:
<<The average thunderstorm has a 24 km diameter.>>

APOD Robot wrote:red sprites[/url] may start as 100-meter balls of ionized air that shoot down from about 80-km high at 10 percent the speed of light

bystander wrote:

DavidLeodis wrote:Could someone please inform me what the FMA in FMA Research stands for as it does not seem to be mentioned in the website brought up through the link and I have been unable to fairly readily find out.

Forensic Meteorology Associates

DavidLeodis wrote:Could someone please inform me what the FMA in FMA Research stands for as it does not seem to be mentioned in the website brought up through the link and I have been unable to fairly readily find out.

jambo wrote:>>. And for me the image evokes a spider on a stick...

jm3 wrote:
I wonder what would keep the ionized gas contained, even temporarily, in the repeating shapes.

nstahl wrote:
10% of the speed of light is an immense speed for anything with mass, which ionized air certainly has. And it would take a LOT of force to accelerate that air to that speed that fast.

• I don't believe that the plasma, itself, is moving that fast.
  
  It is rather the excitations within the plasma that travel that fast. (Think of a tsunami, for instance.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_sprite wrote:
<<Sprites are sometimes inaccurately called upper-atmospheric lightning. However,sprites are cold plasma phenomena that lack the hot channel temperatures of tropospheric lightning, so they are more akin to fluorescent tube discharges than to lightning discharges.>>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glow_discharge wrote:

[b][color=#0000FF]A glow discharge tube featuring its most important characteristics: (a) An anode at one end and cathode at the other end (b) Aston Dark Space(c) Cathode glow (d) Cathode dark space (also called Crookes dark space, or Hittorf dark space) (e) Negative glow (f) Faraday space (g) Positive column (h) Anode glow (i) Anode dark space.[/color][/b]

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<<The simplest type of glow discharge is a direct-current glow discharge. In its simplest form, it consists of two electrodes in a cell held at low pressure (0.1–10 torr). The cell is typically filled with neon, but other gases can also be used. An electric potential of several hundred volts is applied between the two electrodes. A small fraction of the population of atoms within the cell is initially ionized through random processes (thermal collisions between atoms or with gamma rays, for example). The ions (which are positively charged) are driven towards the cathode by the electric potential, and the electrons are driven towards the anode by the same potential. The initial population of ions and electrons collides with other atoms, ionizing them. As long as the potential is maintained, a population of ions and electrons remains.

Some of the ions' kinetic energy is transferred to the cathode. This happens partially through the ions striking the cathode directly. The primary mechanism, however, is less direct. Ions strike the more numerous neutral gas atoms, transferring a portion of their energy to them. These neutral atoms then strike the cathode. Whichever species (ions or atoms) strike the cathode, collisions within the cathode redistribute this energy until a portion of the cathode is ejected, typically in the form of free atoms. This process is known as sputtering. Once free of the cathode, atoms move into the bulk of the glow discharge through drift and due to the energy they gained from sputtering. The atoms can then be excited by collisions with ions, electrons, or other atoms that have been previously excited by collisions. Once excited, atoms will lose their energy fairly quickly. Of the various ways that this energy can be lost, the most important is radiatively, meaning that a photon is released to carry the energy away.>>