A NASA astronaut has photographed eerie bright red lights hanging in Earth’s atmosphere from a window aboard the International Space Station (ISS).
The stunning image, taken by NASA SpaceX Crew-8 mission commander Matthew Dominick on June 3, captured the rapid flash of a weather phenomenon known as “red sprite” lightning.
Red spirits are known to appear high above storm clouds in a part of the upper atmosphere called the mesosphere, which extends up to 53 miles above the surface.
The image showed blood-red bursts of energy glowing upright off the coast of South Africa.
A stunning image, taken this spring by NASA SpaceX Crew-8 mission commander Matthew Dominick, captured the rapid flash of a weather phenomenon known as a “red sprite.” The astronaut photographed the strange glow (above) from the International Space Station
Last December, European Space Agency astronaut Andreas Mogensen also took an incredible photograph (above) and time-lapse sequence of a red sprite.
NASA hopes the ethereal image of the sprite will encourage skywatchers on Earth to submit their own “photographs of sprites and other (Transient Luminous Events or) TLEs to NASA’s citizen science project, Spritacular.”
The US space agency hopes the citizen-led database, which will enter its third year of operation this October, will go a long way in helping scientists understand these rare phenomena.
“I got extremely lucky a few weeks ago when I shot a time-lapse of a thunderstorm off the coast of South Africa,” Dominick explained of his image in a post on social media site X.
“One of the time-lapse frames had a red sprite,” said Dominick, who previously served as a naval test pilot and fighter pilot commander before joining NASA.
“If there are any experts on red goblins, I would like to receive advice on how to capture more of them,” he added.
‘Clearly you have to look for thunderstorms, but I think the stronger the storm, the better.’
Space physicist Dr. Burcu Kosarwho serves as principal investigator of SpiritualHe said the project hopes to unite accidental photographers of phenomena like red sprites with the scientists who study them.
“People capture wonderful images of sprites, but they are shared sporadically across the Internet,” he said. “Most of the scientific community is unaware of these captures.”
“Spritacular will bridge that gap,” says Dr. Kosar, who is based at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
Dominick captured his image of the distinctive red sprites from a vantage point hundreds of miles above these high-altitude electrical discharges, in orbit inside the International Space Station (ISS), 250 miles above the Earth’s surface.
Dominick captured his image of the distinctive red sprites from a vantage point hundreds of miles above these high-altitude electrical discharges, in orbit inside the International Space Station (above) 250 miles above the Earth’s surface.
NASA astronaut Matthew Dominick (self-portrait above) previously served as a naval test pilot and fighter pilot commander before joining the U.S. space program.
Red streaks are electrical bursts of light that occur above very active thunderstorms. (Above, an infographic from the European Space Agency on the generation of these red light beams.)
A NASA press release about the new image further explained that “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 beneath storms on Earth.”
The space agency noted that these and other TLEs are typically captured on camera by happy accidents like this one, usually by taking time-lapse images of Earth with the aid of a long focal length lens.
On the ISS, these time-lapse images are typically taken by scientific instruments mounted outside the space station, such as the Atmosphere-Space Interactions Monitor (ASIM).
The ASIM sensor suite collects a broad spectrum of data for scientific research on Earth, including cameras, photometers, and X-ray and gamma-ray detectors.
