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Illustration of St. Elmo's fire on a ship at sea Electrostatic discharge flashes across the windscreen of a KC-10 cockpit.. St. Elmo's fire (also called witchfire or witch's fire [1]) is a weather phenomenon in which luminous plasma is created by a corona discharge from a rod-like object such as a mast, spire, chimney, or animal horn [2] in an atmospheric electric field.
St. Elmo's Fire and normal sparks both can appear when high electrical voltage affects a gas. St. Elmo's fire is seen during thunderstorms when the ground below the storm is electrically charged, and there is high voltage in the air between the cloud and the ground. The voltage tears apart the air molecules and the gas begins to glow.
Pilots evacuating in preparation for Hurricane Idalia observed bright blue light outside their aircraft, an event called St. Elmo’s fire. Here’s what causes it.
Corona discharges can also happen in weather, such as thunderstorms, where objects like ship masts or airplane wings have a charge significantly different from the air around them (St. Elmo's fire). In many high-voltage applications, corona is an unwanted side effect.
St. Elmo's Fire was a summer movie, originally hitting theaters on June 28, 1985. A few months later, some fans decided to dress up as Billy Hicks for Halloween. "It was surreal. It was the first ...
On 7 September 2011, YAK-Service Flight 9633, carrying the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl professional ice hockey team, crashes shortly after takeoff at Yaroslavl, Russia, killing all but one of the 45 occupants. The investigation found that the pilots were not properly trained on the aircraft type and mishandled it during takeoff.
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Some ghost lights such as St. Elmo's fire or the shiranui have been explained as optical phenomena of light emitted through electrical activity. Other types may be due to combustion of flammable gases, ball lightning, meteors, torches and other human-made fires, the misperception of human objects, and pranks. [2] [3]