Thomas Pesquet, a French astronaut, captured something remarkable from aboard the International Space Station (ISS) on October 8.
Although the photo is one frame from a longer timelapse, it might appear as if it shows a cobalt-bomb exploding above Europe. However, this frighteningly blue light did not cause any damage. It was almost impossible to notice it happening.
The frame instead shows something much less alarming called a "transient luminous events", a lightning-like phenomenon that strikes upwards in the upper atmosphere.
Transient luminous events, also known as upper-atmospheric light, are related phenomena that occur during thunderstorms but far more than normal lighting. Although they are related to lighting, they function a bit differently.
Lightning triggers 'blue Jets' which occur lower in the stratosphere. If the lighting passes through the thunderstorm clouds' negatively charged top region before reaching the positive lower region, it will strike upwards and ignite molecular nitrogen.
Then there are red SPRITES (Stratospheric/mesospheric Perturbations Resulting from Intense Thunderstorm Electrification) electrical discharges that often glow red, occurring high above a thunderstorm cell, triggered by disturbances from the lightning below and slightly dimmer red ELVES (Emission of Light and Very Low Frequency perturbations due to Electromagnetic Pulse Sources) in the ionosphere.
Keeping with the theme, there are also TROLLs, Transient Red Optical Luminous Linaments, which can occur after strong SPRITES as well as Pixies, GHOSTS. These phenomena were named by scientists with a lot of fun, we're sure.
"What's fascinating about lightning is that they were observed anecdotally only a few years ago by pilots, but scientists weren't convinced they existed," Pesquet explained in a caption to a photo.
"Fast forward several years, and we can confirm that elves and sprites exist and could also be influencing our climate!"
Pesquet does not specify the type of luminous event that we are seeing. However, this image may be showing a "blue starter", which is a blue-jet that doesn't make it to its jet part and instead creates an even shorter, brighter glow.
These events are difficult to photograph from ground because they are so high up in the sky, and often obscured by storm clouds. The phenomena are usually brief and last only a few seconds.
All these things make the ISS a great place to search for transient events, especially if you have a timelapse enabled. We've seen a lot of these events from astronauts aboard the ISS so far, as well as a few taken from ground.
Researchers discovered that light shows are not only happening on Earth, but also on Jupiter, which was the subject of a recent study.
Pesquet says that the Space Station is very well-suited to this observatory because it flies above the Equator, where there are more thunderstorms.
"This is a rare occurrence, and we have a facility beyond Europe's Columbus Laboratory dedicated to observing these flashes.
We hope this research will yield more images of this amazing phenomenon in the future.
