The world is full of mysteries, but the blue orbs in the image above aren’t one of them: They're lightning seen from the International Space Station (ISS). What’s really strange is the red sprites that you can see in the center of the picture.
No, it's not a UFO or celestial elves. As NASA explains, astronaut Matthew Dominick took this spectacular photograph of the Earth’s upper atmosphere as the ISS flew over the coast of South Africa on June 3.
The large blue orbs are lightning, something everyone has seen at one time or another, but from the unfamiliar perspective of space. The small red flashes are much less familiar: a rare meteorological phenomenon called a “sprite.”
What are red sprites? Red sprites are part of the so-called “Transient Luminous Events” (TLEs), which are very brief electrical phenomena that occur in the mesosphere, the third highest layer of the atmosphere.
They have elongated and filamentary shapes, resembling giant jellyfish hanging from the sky. Their red color is a result of nitrogen in the atmosphere reacting with the electrical charges of the storms.
These events are associated with extremely intense thunderstorms and are challenging to photograph due to their brief and transient nature.
Citizen science to study them. In 2022, NASA launched a project called Spritacular, inviting anyone with a camera in the right place at the right time to contribute images of red sprites. The project aims to help scientists better understand these rare events.
These events are so fast and brief that we can usually only see them in high-speed photographs. They are often accidental shots. As a matter of fact, that’s how they were discovered in the first place.
The term “sprite” was coined in 1989 by researchers at the University of Minnesota, who accidentally captured them while testing a low-light camera for a rocket launch.
This article was written by Matías S. Zavia and originally published in Spanish on Xataka.
Image | Matthew Dominick | NASA
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