Incredible pic of Red Sprite Lightning

That picture looks very fishy to me. The colours and detail of the grass and tree indicate a picture taken in daylight, whereas at the top stars are visible, which would not be the case in daylight. I think this a montage, not a real photograph.

 

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I thought

NASA would be fairly reliable? It was their photo of the day.

 

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I thought so too, but I was too polite to say anything.


The blurb under the APOD says it is a "composite image", and the link is the an Instagram - presumably of the guy who made the image.

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Ah yes, that accounts for it. But a bit of a swizz for NASA to choose it as photo of the day when it is no such thing. I sometimes wonder about NASA these days. I've a feeling their public relations team is in danger of damaging the scientific credibility of the organisation. Too much sensationalism.

 

I think the point of APOD is not be some "bastion of hard science"; it is meant to inspire. That can't really be done effectively with clinically clean data; it needs to be story-telling.

 

But you will see Pinball took it to be genuine. So there is a risk others will as well, leading to possible misunderstandings about when and where you may expect to see red sprites.

 

I agree. It's like the science channels on TV where there is a documentary that would be interesting enough in its own right without the spooky music in the background.

Reading this thread brought back memories of a night climbing ascent of Mt. Hood. We started about midnight and after we were high enough that we weren't going to be coming down until after the summit, it started to lightning. Not the best place to be. It didn't last all that long but then it started to rain. Just before sunrise we saw a phenomenon that someone called "blood rain" I believe.

It was raining in the distant valleys just as the sun was about to come up so it looked like "blood" coming down from the sky. It's the only time I've ever seen that. It was no "ball lightning" but it was fairly impressive. I don't know why they bother to post those fake looking pictures above. Even without knowing the details you just know it's fake to one degree or another.

 

I do agree about the BLOODY music! The whole idea with documentaries, especially on science, is to be as objective as possible, something that is made virtually impossible by tendentious sound effects, designed to induce in viewers or listeners a particular state of mind. I've stopped listening to most BBC radio documentaries now, because they've started putting on background music almost all the time. It's really distracting on radio, when you are trying to hear somebody speaking, and I hate the way it is subliminally trying to tell you what to think, about what is being described or said.

 

Ahhh. I am guilty of not reading the small print, I feel a little annoyed at NASA though.

 

Disappointed about that, this is NASA who are supposed to the beacon of science and technology.

I will look twice next time.

 

That’s how I thought you might feel.

We’ve enough trouble these days with faked up images, so that we can’t feel sure of whom to trust. The last thing we need is for organisations like NASA to start f***ing about.

 

Agreed.

 

I never felt that APOD was meant to be hard data. It's always seemed to me to be a pop PR thing - a public reach out. So I don't l see this as in any way disingenuous.

The blurb talks about comparisons between the tree and the sprite. And it does say where they got the pic from. So it's not like they're being sneaky. I'd say y'all's expectations of what APOD is about were maybe a little presumptive?

My 2¢.

 

I want a proper image from NASA no touch ups or composites, I have paint I can do that myself.
In terms of the space telescopes, we expect a pallette that's fine. The EM radiation is actually THERE.

 

Couldn’t resist, got the idea from NASA.

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Yeah, sometimes you can't even clearly hear the person speak because of the irritating music. It's even worse when the music is mean to impart fear where there really should be none.

National Geographic is usually decent but they film a segment on the Giant Pacific Octopus up here in the PNW. I see them on every dive and many of my dives are at night. Yet, the NG staff, when getting ready to jump off the boat to look for the GPO were implying that "Well, we may not be back" just as scary music was playing. Why do that?

 

Steady on, MR will think the red jellyfish is an alien.

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That’s what annoys me. Especially on radio, when the spoken voice is the only thing imparting information. Background music is a real distraction. And adds to the cost and complexity of production, I would have thought.

 

I had to find out how these people were catching these images.
I have now learnt there are red sprite chasers, something like those tornado chasers.
This Video by Paul Smith shows ‘live’ sprites appearing and disappearing over the countryside.
Good shots at time tags 0:20sec and 0:45sec. Best watch from start it's only 20 secs in and again at 45 secs in. Then a bit slow.

 

Don’t get me started. Have you noticed on the BBC news how they seem to wait for the music to begin so they can announce the headline stories over the music.
"10 people die in burning building" is better announced over music than no music.