ROANOKE TIMES 

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, September 24, 1993                   TAG: 9309240142
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

MYSTERY SKY FLASHES REAL, NASA DISCOVERS

Airborne researchers have captured on video a weather phenomenon that had eluded discovery, huge mysterious flashes of light that shoot from the tops of storm clouds into the upper atmosphere, NASA announced Thursday.

The images, taken over the Midwest during the summer floods, confirm the existence of an event long rumored but dismissed as akin to flying saucer reports. Scientists said they now believe the outbursts may affect atmospheric ozone and disrupt instruments aboard high-altitude research planes.

A team from the University of Alaska's Geophysical Institute, using a low-light-level camera aboard a NASA DC-8, recorded 19 flashes above a severe thunderstorm over Iowa, Kansas and Nebraska one night in July.

The scintillations, lasting less than 1/30th of a second, are estimated to be about 25 miles tall and 6 miles wide, according to researchers Eugene Wescott and Davis Sentman.

Their shapes resemble jellyfish, Wescott said.

- The Washington Post 


 by CNB