Red spites, a type of transient luminous event or TLE, appear in the upper atmosphere above a thunderstorm in Oklahoma in April 2025. Photograph by Paul Smith Our atmosphere is like one big electrical ...

Speeding around the Earth at 28,000 km/h, NASA astronaut Nichole Ayers captured an incredible view of a phenomenon known as a red sprite. Here's the science behind this 'transient luminous event'.

Giant red blobs, picket fences, upward branching carrots, and tentacled octopi - these are just a few of the phrases used to describe sprites - spectacular, eerie flashes of colored light high above ...

U.S. astronaut Nichole "Vapor" Ayers captured a spectacular view of a phenomenon known as a "sprite" blazing to life above an intense thunderstorm — and she did this while orbiting 250 miles (400 ...

A NASA astronaut drifting high above Earth recently managed to capture a rare phenomenon that scientists have been working to understand for about three decades. Known as a "sprite," the atmospheric ...

An astronaut on the International Space Station has captured a rare kind of lightning called a sprite while traveling 250 miles above the Texas–Mexico border. Referred to as “space lightning” and ...

An astronaut has captured an incredible burst of electricity above Earth. NASA's Nichole Ayers managed to snap a phenomenon called a red sprite from the International Space Station (ISS) on Thursday ...

An astronaut aboard the International Space Station has shared a striking photo of what is known as a Transient Luminous Event seen above a thunderstorm over Mexico and the Desert Southwest earlier in ...

“As we went over Mexico and the U.S. this morning, I caught this sprite,” the former collegiate volleyball player said Ayers is aboard the International Space Station as pilot of SpaceX Dragon’s ...

There are also some other rarer, even more spectacular types of lightning: ...