A new ray of light across the globe

Astronauts videotaping thunderstorms from the space shuttle Columbia captured what scientists said on Thursday was a never-before-seen red glowing arc of light paralleling the curve of the Earth. ‘‘Two nights ago over Africa was an extraordinary image. We saw a huge horizontal line of air glow which has been brightened by lightning below it which extended to several hundred miles horizontally and we feel it may be something new,’’ said Dr Yoav Yair.

Yair, project coordinator for Israeli experiments on board the Columbia in its current mission, said analysis will attempt over the next few weeks to confirm scientists’ initial impression that the glow is neither a sprite nor an elf, two other electrical phenomena associated with thunderstorms. ‘‘It is raw data hot from the oven,’’ Yair said.

‘‘It’s a grainy and noisy image but for scientists it’s a treasure trove. That’s what we like.’’

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Scientists were excited by the news that astronauts on Sunday captured the first-ever pictures of elves taken from space with a calibrated camera. The shuttle and its seven-member crew, which includes Israel’s first astronaut, Ilan Ramon, are on a 16-day science mission that began on January 16.

The study of sprites, elves and other luminosities associated with thunderstorms is part of what Yair described as a new discipline in the field of upper atmospheric physics. (Reuters)