A rare red sprite captured from the International Space Station posted on X on June 20, 2024, showing an event earlier in the year. The image was taken off the coast of South Africa."Super lucky a few weeks ago when shooting a timelapse of a lightning storm off the coast of South Africa. One of the frames in the timelapse had a red sprite," NASA astronaut Dominick"A rare event.
Red sprites, also known as red lightning, occur during some extremely intense thunderstorms. Most lightning flashes move down from the clouds to the ground, a sprite goes in the opposite direction: up, into the upper atmosphere. These sprites are very brief, lasting only for about a millisecond, which makes them difficult to observe even with professional equipment from orbit. That said, they can be very large, sometimes spanning as large as 30 miles across.Breaking space news, the latest updates on rocket launches, skywatching events and more!Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors
Lightning has been studied for many years on the ISS, including 2015 images of different phenomena thatMogensen used a new camera during his second excursion on the ISS to"study the formation and development of these types of lightning in much more detail," Mogensen"Instead of taking images by collecting light through the camera shutter, the camera measures differences in light and uses that information to create an image," ESA officials The new study, lead author Olivier...
Elizabeth Howell , Ph.D., is a staff writer in the spaceflight channel since 2022 covering diversity, education and gaming as well. She was contributing writer forfor 10 years before joining full-time.