NASA astronaut Nichole Ayers captured a stunning photograph of one of nature’s most elusive phenomena from the International Space Station on July 3, 2025, initially believing she had documented a sprite, a rare form of atmospheric lightning, only to discover she had captured something even more extraordinary: a gigantic jet.
“Nichole Ayers caught a rare and spectacular form of a TLE from the International Space Station — a gigantic jet,” confirmed Dr. Burcu Kosar, Principal Investigator of NASA’s Spritacular project. The discovery represents one of the clearest views of this atmospheric phenomenon ever documented from space.
From the website:
Gigantic jets are a powerful type of electrical discharge that extends from the top of a thunderstorm into the upper atmosphere. They are typically observed by chance — often spotted by airline passengers or captured unintentionally by ground-based cameras aimed at other phenomena. Gigantic jets appear when the turbulent conditions at towering thunderstorm tops allow for lightning to escape the thunderstorm, propagating upwards toward space. They create an electrical bridge between the tops of the clouds (~20 km) and the upper atmosphere (~100 km), depositing a significant amount of electrical charge.
Thank you! Can’t believe I had to scroll this far for an explanation. So then, are all those other patches of light also electrical storms?
Also what is a sprite in this context?
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ELVEs (Emissions of Light and Very Low Frequency perturbations due to Electromagnetic Pulse Sources)
This has to be one of the most shoehorned acronyms I’ve ever seen
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A lot of the other light patches in this image are city lights.
The other patches of light are cities. Lightning isn’t as grainy looking. The exposure time of the shot is short so the image doesn’t blur as the station moves, so the chances are stacked against getting two flashes in the one image.
good news. climate change means more violent storms. which means more chances for pictures?
sorry forgot to link, thanks!
So… I click on the thumbnail and it shows me a smaller image. cool.
That’s one hell of a quest marker.
Especially when there’s no fast-travel.
I wish every magical-thinking person would just put like 50% more effort in and actually learn about science, because it’s so much cooler when you know it’s actually real and why it’s happening.
I wish every magical-thinking person would join the reality-based community.
I wish the magical-thinking community were not treated like adults and given the ability to vote. That’s just carelessness with our Democracy.
Same, but right now my magical thinking tinfoil cap (the ability to mask as a right wing evangelical) might be the only armor I have under fascism
Learning about science is like learning about magic.
I knew lightning could strike horizontally and downward. But never realized it could go up. That just seems so weird to me.
I guess it’s less strange than ball lightning though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_lightning
They’re called Sprites!
Article says this is specifically not a sprite.
I wonder where we can get a higher res picture. It bums me out these articles that talk about a nasa photo never seem to link to a the source images.
Even the NASA article has the same res.
Pretty much the norm. You know they have a higher res and its probably available if you know the magic url for it.
I dug through the astronaut photos and couldn’t find it. Neat stuff in there, a time sink, but not easily searchable.
They don’t make them readily available to the public even though they should. Its probably the cost of hosting that keeps it all buried somewhere.
How are astronauts not just constantly shitting themselves in fear?
NASA can’t fool me. That’s a demon summoning if I’ve ever seen one.
“New rift portal has opened”
Its Pugsley Addams if its anything at all.
TLE? Did I miss the definition? Would be nice to have it in the body text.
Edit: went to the article which thankfully someone else posted. Transient Luminous Event is a TLE.
It’s a Walmart. Specifically, the Tire and Lube Express.
Cool, a new wallpaper
Sorry everyone, I knew trying everything on the taco bell menu was a bad idea but I couldn’t stop
Looks like the second impact
It’s the lance of Longinus!
So, does anyone have an idea of where on Earth we’re looking at?
Anytime I look at images from the ISS, I try to identify cities, landmarks, or even a cardinal direction. I’m not very good at it…
The phenomenon took place at roughly 29°N 101.5°W over Coahuila, Mexico.
I’m like 99% sure that were looking at the outside of Earth in the photo, but i can’t be entirely sure.
I think there’s too many clouds? Anyways if I were to guess, I’d say houston (because of all of the problems in my life rn).
If I’m thinking of the same thing, I believe these come from within the center of hurricanes.
Serious question.
If we could harness these lightning strikes and convert them into usable electricity. Would it change our planet? Would it drain the planet of some force of energy keeping us alive?
I doubt it, lightning strikes are just static discharges
Right but energy doesn’t end it just changes forms. Surely lightning has effects in our entire planet in some form or fashion we may or may not know about yet or it wouldn’t be here.
It’s high voltage and high current, but really short time. Voltage times current is power, power times time is energy. So not much energy really.
@OhVenus_Baby @drmoose depends if you’re doing 88 at the time
Not a physicist, but here is my understanding.
It shouldn’t. We can’t store that much energy with current technology. Energy can’t be created or destroyed, so we would be using it for some other purpose and converting it to something else. Lightning strikes help in the nitrogen cycle, but that happens in the air. I doubt this would be impacted by us capturing the energy.
If we are able to store that much energy, we would be advanced enough to keep our planet safe, hopefully. It will bring different problems. Somewhat related to this, you should read about Kardashev scale and Dyson spheare.
Putting up wind farms should have more impact since it can change wind patterns, but the new wind turbines might be a lot better.
I don’t think we could ever take so much energy that we’d suck the planet dry of it. I think a lot of the energy comes from solar energy through to our atmosphere or sumthing and there’s a lot of solar energy probably.
Im really dumb tho so probably dont read this post unless its too late because this disclaimer is the second paragraph.
Not really but I found this bright star near us and all we have to do is lay out some panels to capture its energy.
Pretty sure someone’s just opened a portal to hell.
