Bizarre blue blobs hover in Earth's atmosphere in stunning astronaut photo. But what are they?

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 spotted from the International 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.

The first image of two.

The interaction with atmospheric particles is affected by the colors of visible light. The moon turned blue due to blue light being the most likely to scatter. According to NASA, the blue wavelength of sunlight scatters the most and becomes more visible to the human eye during the day.

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.

It was originally published on Live Science