After the great excitement from the "hunt" the red elves are all waiting for the next "hunt" - dust storms. The cloudiness that brought down heavy rains in the area has temporarily dissipated and the crew members of the Madex experiment, on the shuttle, in the control rooms on the ground and in our area, hope that this time it will be successful
Routine on the Columbia shuttle continues without a hitch. This is what Dr. Yoav Yair says on the website "Israel in Space" of MoTH (link - on the left). The astronauts all manage to keep to the meticulous pre-set agenda. Ilan Ramon's high-profile conversation with the Prime Minister and the Minister of Education was also successful.
After the great excitement from the "hunt" the red elves are all waiting for the next "hunt" - dust storms. The cloudiness that brought down heavy rains in the area has temporarily dissipated and the crew members of the Madex experiment, on the shuttle, in the control rooms on the ground and in our area, hope that this time it will be successful. The surveillance is joint surveillance - from the shuttle's cameras and a light plane that flies in the eastern basin of the Mediterranean Sea and monitors weather changes.
We received the following explanation from the spokesperson of Tel Aviv University. The experimental MEIDEX camera on behalf of Tel Aviv University measures sprites and elves from the space shuttle
Elves are short flashes of light that sometimes appear above thunderstorms at heights of about 60-100 km above the ground. ELVES appear in the form of a round ring, while SPRITES appear in various forms such as jellyfish, teeth, as well as in elongated shapes that look like carrots.
These strange phenomena, which were discovered for the first time only about 14 years ago, are created under the influence of strong electric fields created by lightning bursts of great power in the clouds below.
The location, time and way in which these sprites are formed are still unclear and one of the roles of the Israeli space shuttle experiment is to identify and measure these phenomena. This is done by Ilan Ramon and scientists from Tel Aviv University and the Open University.
The two images below were taken on January 19 by the MEIDEX experiment camera. The images are of ELVE over the South Pacific Ocean and two SPRITES over southeast Australia. The images were taken with the shuttle pointing the cameras above the horizon. The light in the lower part of the images is from lightning in the clouds at an altitude of About 10 km, while the elves appear at an altitude of about 90 km (the photos were taken in black and white and highlighted here by color).
