THE STRUCTURE OF RED SPRITES DETERMINED BY VLF SCATTERING

Red Sprites occur high above the stratosphere, just under the ionosphe re. Although the first reported observation was over 100 years ago, an d the first theory was 40 years ago, only over the last year or so has the subject spread into the popular science magazines, and into the s ecular media. Most of the studies of the sprite structure have been op tical, using the light they emit for a few tens of milliseconds for im aging (low-light video and photography) and spectroscopy. Here, we con centrate on the scattering by sprites of man-made VLF radio waves. Thi s scattering shows that the columnar elements of spites have a substan tial electrical conductivity.