NASA shares photos of an extraordinary event witnessed by astronauts on the space station

https://lemmy.world/post/44050332

NASA shares photos of an extraordinary event witnessed by astronauts on the space station - Lemmy.World

[https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/78084443-d411-48f4-946d-c13dfa3e4675.jpeg] >…A mysterious phenomenon known as “red sprites” randomly occur in the mesosphere, hanging like upside-down jellyfish for a scant ten milliseconds. Blue jets spear from cloud tops toward the stratosphere with eerie, silent urgency. >Both events happen so fast and high that capturing their details was nearly impossible. Yet ASIM can spot them from orbit. >One study used its footage and ground instruments to pinpoint the altitude of a single blue jet. This confirmed that these upward bolts really do punch beyond the weather layer we know. >Those measurements feed directly into storm-charging models, which in turn inform aviation guidelines about where dangerous electrical fields might lurk…

We don’t know the exact physics behind them but they were known for more than a 100 years, first photographs were taken 30 years ago, the article is a bit clickbaity.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprite_(lightning)

It’s still hard to photograph them, but they are not ufos.

Sprite (lightning) - Wikipedia