There are two strange blue blobs of light in our planet's atmosphere, which have been snapped by an astronauts aboard the International Space Station.
The pair might look like something out of a science fiction movie. They are the result of two natural phenomena at the same time.
The image was taken by a member of the crew of the International Space Station. The photo was released by NASA.
There is a huge lightning strike in the Gulf of Thailand at the bottom of the image.
It's hard to see lightning strikes from the International Space Station. This particular strike took place next to a large, circular gap in the top of the clouds, which caused the lightning to illuminate the surrounding walls of the cloudy caldera-like structure.
There was a 'blue jet' lightning spotted from the space station.
There is a second blue blob in the top right of the image.
The orientation of Earth's natural satellite means the light it reflects back from the sun goes straight through the planet's atmosphere and into a bright blue blob.
The Earth Observatory says that this effect is caused by some of the moonlight scattering off tiny particles.
There are different colors of visible light that have different wavelength. The moon turned blue because blue light is the most likely to scatter.
The blue sky is caused by the blue wavelength of sunlight scattering the most and becoming more visible to the human eye.
There is a glowing web of artificial lights in the picture. There are other sources of light pollution in the image, but they are mostly obscured by clouds.
The edge of the atmosphere is known as the 'Earth's limb' and is seen from space.
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The original article was published by Live Science. The original article can be found here.
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