St. Elmo's fire

St Elmo's Fire viewed through the flight deck of a KC-10 aircraft.

St. Elmo's fire is a bright blue or violet glow, appearing like fire in some circumstances, from tall, sharply pointed structures such as masts, spires, and chimneys, and on aircraft wings or nose cones. St. Elmo's fire can also appear on leaves and grass, and even at the tips of cattle horns.[3] Often accompanying the glow is a distinct hissing or buzzing sound. It is sometimes confused with ball lightning. In the picture from the cockpit to the right, it is the background blue-violet glow and not the spark discharge across the cockpit window. St Elmo's fire is akin to corona discharge from a negative electrode and not the spark, when the air finally breaks down and conducts.

St. Elmo's fire is a form of plasma. The electric field around the object in question causes ionization of the air molecules, producing a faint glow easily visible in low-light conditions. Conditions that can generate St. Elmo's fire are present during thunderstorms, when high voltage differentials are present between clouds and the ground underneath. A local electric field of approximately 100 kV/m is required to begin a discharge in moist air. The magnitude of the electric field depends greatly on the geometry (shape and size) of the object. Sharp points lower the necessary voltage because electric fields are more concentrated in areas of high curvature, so discharges preferentially occur and are more intense at the ends of pointed objects.

The nitrogen and oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere cause St. Elmo's fire to fluoresce with blue or violet light; this is similar to the mechanism that causes neon lights to glow, albeit at a different colour due to the different gas involved.[4]

In 1751, Benjamin Franklin hypothesized that a pointed iron rod would light up at the tip during a lightning storm, similar in appearance to St. Elmo's fire.[5][6]

• In ancient Greece, the appearance of a single one was called Helene (Ancient Greek: Ἑλένη), literally meaning "torch",[7] and two were called Castor and Polydeuces, names of the mythological twin brothers of Helen.[8]
• After the medieval period, it was sometimes associated with the Greek element of fire, such as with one of Paracelsus's elementals, specifically the salamander, or, alternatively, with a similar creature referred to as an acthnici.[9]
• Welsh mariners knew it as canwyll yr ysbryd, 'spirit-candles' or canwyll yr ysbryd glân ("candles of the Holy Ghost", or the "candles of St. David").[10]
• Russian sailors have seen them throughout the years. To them, they are "Saint Nicholas" or "Saint Peter's lights".[10] They were also sometimes called St. Helen's or St. Hermes' fire, perhaps through linguistic confusion.[11]
• St. Elmo's fire is reported to have been seen during the Siege of Constantinople by the Ottoman Empire in 1453. It reportedly was seen emitting from the top of the Hippodrome. The Byzantines attributed it to a sign that the Christian God would soon come and destroy the conquering Muslim army. According to George Sphrantzes, it disappeared just days before Constantinople fell, ending the Byzantine Empire.
• Accounts of Magellan's first circumnavigation of the globe refer to St. Elmo's fire being seen around the fleet's ships multiple times off the coast of South America. The sailors saw these as favorable omens.
• St Elmo's fire was also seen during the 1955 Great Plains tornado outbreak in Kansas and Oklahoma (US).[12]
• Among the phenomena experienced on British Airways Flight 9 on 24 June 1982 were glowing light flashes along the leading edges of the aircraft, including the wings and cockpit windscreen, which were seen by both passengers and crew. While the bright flashes of light shared similarities with St Elmo's fire, the glow experienced was from the impact of ash particles on the leading edges of the aircraft, similar to that seen by operators of sandblasting equipment.
• St. Elmo's fire was observed and its optical spectrum recorded during a University of Alaska research flight over the Amazon in 1995 to study sprites.[13][14]
• The ill-fated Air France Flight 447 flight from Rio de Janeiro–Galeão (GIG) to Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport in 2009 is understood to have experienced St. Elmo's fire 23 minutes prior to crashing into the Atlantic Ocean; however, the phenomenon was not a factor in the disaster.[15][16]
• Apoy ni San Elmo — commonly shortened to Santelmo — is a bad omen or a flying spirit in Filipino folklore.

One of the earliest references to the phenomenon appears in Alcaeus's Fragment 34a about the Dioscuri, or Castor and Pollux.[29] It is also referenced in Homeric Hymn 33 to the Dioscuri who were from Homeric times associated with it.[30] Whether the Homeric Hymn antedates the Alcaeus fragment is unknown.

St. Elmo's Fire is also mentioned in the novel, Castaways of the Flying Dutchman by Brian Jacques.

The phenomenon appears to be described first in the Gesta Herwardi,[31] written around 1100 and concerning an event of the 1070s. However, one of the earliest direct references to St. Elmo's fire made in fiction can be found in Ludovico Ariosto's epic poem Orlando Furioso (1516). It is located in the 17th canto (19th in the revised edition of 1532) after a storm has punished the ship of Marfisa, Astolfo, Aquilant, Grifon, and others, for three straight days, and is positively associated with hope:

But now St. Elmo's fire appeared, which they had so longed for, it settled at the bows of a fore stay, the masts and yards all being gone, and gave them hope of calmer airs.

— Ludovico Ariosto, 1516

In Shakespeare's The Tempest (c. 1623), Act I, Scene II, St. Elmo's fire acquires a more negative association, appearing as evidence of the tempest inflicted by Ariel according to the command of Prospero:

PROSPERO

Hast thou, spirit,

Perform'd to point the tempest that I bade thee?

ARIEL

To every article.

I boarded the king's ship; now on the beak,

Now in the waist, the deck, in every cabin,

I flamed amazement: sometime I'd divide,

And burn in many places; on the topmast,

The yards and bowsprit, would I flame distinctly,

Then meet and join.

— Act I, Scene II, The Tempest

The fires are also mentioned as "death fires" in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner:

About, about, in reel and rout,

The death fires danced at night;

The water, like a witch's oils,

Burnt green and blue and white.

— l. 127–130

Later in 18th century and 19th century, literature associated St. Elmo's fire with bad omen or divine judgment, coinciding with the growing conventions of Romanticism and the Gothic novel. For example, in Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), during a thunderstorm above the ramparts of the castle:

"And what is that tapering of light you bear?" said Emily, "see how it darts upwards,—and now it vanishes!"

"This light, lady," said the soldier, "has appeared to-night as you see it, on the point of my lance, ever since I have been on watch; but what it means I cannot tell."

"This is very strange!" said Emily.

"My fellow-guard," continued the man, "has the same flame on his arms; he says he has sometimes seen it before...he says it is an omen, lady, and bodes no good."

"And what harm can it bode?" rejoined Emily.

"He knows not so much as that, lady."

— Vol. III, Ch. IV, The Mysteries of Udolpho

In the 1864 novel Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne, the author describes the fire occurring while sailing during a subterranean electrical storm (Chapter 35, Page 191):

On the mast already I see the light play of a lambent St. Elmo's fire; the outstretched sail catches not a breath of wind, and hangs like a sheet of lead.

In Herman Melville's novel Moby-Dick, Starbuck points out "corpusants" during a thunder storm in the Japanese sea in chapter 119 "The Candles".

St. Elmo's fire makes an appearance in The Adventures of Tintin comic, Tintin in Tibet, by Hergé. Tintin recognizes the phenomenon on Captain Haddock's ice-axe.

In Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, Billy Pilgrim sees the phenomenon on soldiers' helmets and on rooftops. Vonnegut's The Sirens of Titan also notes the phenomenon affecting Winston Niles Rumfoord's dog, Kazak, the Hound of Space, in conjunction with solar disturbances of the chrono-synclastic infundibulum.

In Robert Aickman's story "Niemandswasser" (1975), the protagonist, Prince Albrecht von Allendorf, is "known as Elmo to his associates, because of the fire which to them emanated from him". "There was an inspirational force in Elmo of which the sensitive soon became aware, and which had led to his Spottname or nickname."

In "On The Banks of Plum Creek" by Laura Ingalls Wilder St. Elmo's fire is seen by the girls and Ma during one of the blizzards. It was described as coming down the stove pipe and rolling across the floor following Ma's knitting needles; it didn't burn the floor (pages 309-310). The phenomenon as described, however, is more similar to ball lightning.

In "Voyager," the third major novel in Diana Gabaldon's popular Outlander series, the primary characters experience St. Elmo's fire while lost at sea in a thunderstorm between Hispaniola and coastal Georgia.

The phenomenon appears in the first stanza of Robert Hayden's poem "The Ballad of Nat Turner";[32] it's also referred to with the term 'corposant' in the first section of his long poem "Middle Passage".[33]

On the children's television series The Mysterious Cities of Gold (1982), Episode 4 shows St. Elmo's Fire affecting the ship as it sailed past the Strait of Magellan. The real-life footage at the end of the episode has snippets of an interview with Japanese sailor Fukunari Imada, whose comments were translated to "Although I've never seen St. Elmo's Fire, I'd certainly like to. It was often considered a bad omen as it played havoc with compasses and equipment". The TV series also referred to St. Elmo's Fire as being a bad omen during the cartoon. The footage was captured as part of his winning solo yacht race in 1981.[34]

On the American television series Rawhide, in a 1959 episode titled "Incident of the Blue Fire", cattle drovers on a stormy night see St. Elmo's Fire glowing on the horns of their steers, which the men regard as a deadly omen.[35] St. Elmo's Fire is also referenced in a 1965 episode of Bonanza in which religious pilgrims staying on the Cartwright property believe an experience with St. Elmo's Fire is the work of Satan.[36][37]

• In Moby Dick (1956), St. Elmo's fire stops Captain Ahab from killing Starbuck.
• In The Last Sunset (1961), outlaw/cowhand Brendan "Bren" O'Malley (Kirk Douglas) rides in from the herd and leads the recently widowed Belle Breckenridge (Dorothy Malone) to an overview of the cattle. As he takes the rifle from her he proclaims, "Something out there, you could live five lifetimes, and never see again," the audience is then shown a shot of the cattle with a blue or violet glow coming from their horns. "Look. St. Elmo's Fire. Never seen it except on ships," O'Malley says as Belle says, "I've never seen it anywhere. What is it?" Trying to win her back he says, "Well a star fell and smashed and scattered its glow all over the place."
• In St. Elmo's Fire (1985), Rob Lowe's character erroneously claims that the phenomenon is "not even a real thing."
• In the western miniseries Lonesome Dove (1989-1990), lightning strikes a herd of cows during a storm, causing their horns to glow blue.
• In Lars von Trier's 2011 film Melancholia, the phenomenon features in the opening sequence and later in the film as the rogue planet Melancholia approaches Earth for an impact event.
• In Robert Eggers's 2019 horror film The Lighthouse in reference to the mysterious salvation that lighthouse keeper Thomas Wake (Willem Dafoe) is hiding from Ephraim Winslow (Robert Pattinson) up inside the Fresnel lens of the lantern.

Brian Eno's third studio album Another Green World (1975) contains a song titled "St. Elmo's Fire" in which guesting King Crimson guitarist Robert Fripp (credited with playing "Wimshurst guitar" in the liner notes) improvises a lightning-fast solo that would imitate an electrical charge between two poles on a Wimshurst high voltage generator.

Michael Frank's song "St Elmo's Fire" was released on his album "The Art of Tea" in 1976. His song has since been sampled various times by artists like Absolutely Fabolous, & more.

The first song in Susumu Hirasawa's album Aurora, "Stone Garden" (石の庭 Ishi no Niwa), contains a line which translates to

That day when I melted away into the sky
Burning like St. Elmo's sacred fire[38]

"St. Elmo's Fire (Man in Motion)" is a song recorded by John Parr. It hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 on September 7, 1985, remaining there for two weeks. It was the main theme for Joel Schumacher's 1985 film St. Elmo's Fire.

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Wikimedia Commons has media related to St. Elmo's Fire.

• St. Elmo's fire photographed on the flight deck of an airliner
• St. Elmo's Fire on Lake Monona on YouTube