Columbia Crew Photographed Mystery Object
Posted on: Wednesday, 26 January 2005, 00:00 CST
NASA officials said the space shuttle Columbia crew observed an unprecedented flash of light in 2003 over the Indian Ocean.
They said the flash might have been a new type of lightning, but one not necessarily caused by a thunderstorm. The discharge was observed less than two weeks before the shuttle was lost during its Earth reentry on Feb. 1.
Scientists are calling the flash a Transient Ionospheric Glow Emission in Red, or TIGER, event. It was recorded by a video camera in the near-infrared spectrum in the nighttime sky just south of Madagascar on Jan. 20, 2003. When the camera was recovered and the tape analyzed, scientists found what visually looks like a bright flash, but one that did not resemble any known class of luminous events, which typically appear in conjunction with thunderstorms.
The scientists also analyzed ground and satellite measurements of lightning in the region and said the particular flash was not detected by equipment monitoring the skies at the time. In fact, they added, no cloud-to-ground lightning was seen in the area around the emission's detection time -- although meteor trails were observed by the same equipment on another orbit two days later and therefore they might be the source of the event.
Source: United Press International
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