Origin of mysterious green 'ghosts' in the sky has been discovered | Hacker News Reader

Origin of mysterious green 'ghosts' in the sky has been discovered

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104 pointsbelter18 comments

>“We didn’t expect there to be so much iron density at that altitude. It comes from meteors that enter the atmosphere at high speed, burn up and [then] the metal atoms are left suspended. The iron layer is normally a little bit higher. In our case, we hypothesized that on that day there were gravity waves [a wave phenomenon in the air] and the iron layer was lowered,” says Passas Varo.

That still sounds like so many different things happening at the right time, but that would also explain their elusive nature and difficulty to capture and study.

I wholeheartedly recommend the YouTube channel of Hank Schyma, aka Pecos Hank.

https://www.youtube.com/@PecosHank

Here's one of his videos about the green ghosts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIaYOdujmz4

Even on a 1080p monitor the 2160p version of that video is much clearer than the 1080p version, the timelapses look blocky, compressed.

Interesting, and at 3:49 of that video, we see that a shooting star/meteorite enters the scene on the right, which is the recipe for these "ghosts" as it contributes iron particles to the atmosphere that result in this phenomenon, according to the hypothesis.

That's a pretty sweet channel for storm lovers.

He gives good security advice for tornado chasers too.

He's SO enjoyable to watch!

Yep, for those times when the Youtube algo can't satisfy my general content cravings, Pecos Hank's channel is the first I scroll to in my subscription list.

> ghost; that term is also the acronym for “Green emissions from excited Oxygen in Sprite Tops.”

This confused me no end

Green Halo from Oxygen in Sprite Tops

Yeah, it’s GOST not GHOST. maybe they spell the acronym as GhOST or G(h)OST to add to the number of skipped characters.

Unfortunately GOST is already an acronym in use: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GOST

It's at least a different field though, and the world is full of endless amounts of overlapping acronyms. I was in a meeting the other day where people were talking about CFA forms, I found at least 6 different meanings across 6 different fields from finances to felines before I gave up.

With stratosphere full of burned deorbited satellites, we might see more colors in future.

The satellites are dwarfed by meteors. They won’t make a difference

I was curious about that:

44 tonnes of meteorite per day falls into the atmosphere! [1]

There are 8000 satellites in orbit (including dead ones). Seems like most are under 1 tonne. That's 8000 tonnes maximum so if it all comes down in 1 year (somehow), it's less than the mass of meteorites for that year.

[1] https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/meteors-meteorites/

Some spectral lines are much more prominent, some elements/molecules will stay there longer, it can't be compared only by weight.

Also, if Starship is successful as planned, means on average several tons launched per day, most of which mass to be deorbited just few years later. Starlink plans to deorbit thousands of satellites per year, V2 are 800kg already, likely getting heavier if launching gets cheaper.

Satellites are significantly more metal-rich than meteors—also it's clear with Starship and multiple large (10,000+) satellite constellations that the total deorbited mass annually is only going to grow.

First time I ever seen someone I know in the newspaper.

Very interesting read.

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