A midsummer red sprite seen from space
NASA astronaut Matthew Dominick photographed red sprites in Earth's upper atmosphere from the International Space Station on June 3, 2024. The bright red flashes are a less understood phenomena associated with powerful lightning events and appear high above the clouds in the mesosphere.
Transient Luminous Events (TLEs), including red sprites, are colorful bursts of energy that appear above storms as a result of lightning activity occurring in and below storms on Earth.
Crew members typically capture TLEs with wide focal lengths during Earth timelapses. Instruments mounted outside the station, like Atmosphere-Space Interactions Monitor (ASIM), can capture a range of data for researchers on Earth using cameras, photometers, X-ray and gamma-ray detectors.
More information: While space station crew hunt for TLEs from space, you can help right here on Earth: send your photographs of sprites and other TLEs to NASA's citizen science project, , to contribute to a crowdsourced database that professional scientists can use for research.
Provided by NASA