NASA astronaut Nichole Ayers captured a stunning photograph of one of nature’s most elusive phenomena from the International Space Station on July 3, 2025, initially believing she had documented a sprite, a rare form of atmospheric lightning, only to discover she had captured something even more extraordinary: a gigantic jet.
“Nichole Ayers caught a rare and spectacular form of a TLE from the International Space Station — a gigantic jet,” confirmed Dr. Burcu Kosar, Principal Investigator of NASA’s Spritacular project. The discovery represents one of the clearest views of this atmospheric phenomenon ever documented from space.
Looks like the second impact
It’s the lance of Longinus!
TLE? Did I miss the definition? Would be nice to have it in the body text.
Edit: went to the article which thankfully someone else posted. Transient Luminous Event is a TLE.
So…they don’t know what it is either?
Not sure. I definitely don’t know what it is haha.
It’s a Walmart. Specifically, the Tire and Lube Express.
Cool, a new wallpaper
Pretty sure someone’s just opened a portal to hell.
Sorry everyone, I knew trying everything on the taco bell menu was a bad idea but I couldn’t stop
I wish every magical-thinking person would just put like 50% more effort in and actually learn about science, because it’s so much cooler when you know it’s actually real and why it’s happening.
I wish every magical-thinking person would join the reality-based community.
I wish the magical-thinking community were not treated like adults and given the ability to vote. That’s just carelessness with our Democracy.
Same, but right now my magical thinking tinfoil cap (the ability to mask as a right wing evangelical) might be the only armor I have under fascism
Learning about science is like learning about magic.
I know. It must have been designed.
if it’s not because of Republican Jesus I don’t need to know.
So… I click on the thumbnail and it shows me a smaller image. cool.
From the website:
Gigantic jets are a powerful type of electrical discharge that extends from the top of a thunderstorm into the upper atmosphere. They are typically observed by chance — often spotted by airline passengers or captured unintentionally by ground-based cameras aimed at other phenomena. Gigantic jets appear when the turbulent conditions at towering thunderstorm tops allow for lightning to escape the thunderstorm, propagating upwards toward space. They create an electrical bridge between the tops of the clouds (~20 km) and the upper atmosphere (~100 km), depositing a significant amount of electrical charge.
Thank you! Can’t believe I had to scroll this far for an explanation. So then, are all those other patches of light also electrical storms?
Also what is a sprite in this context?
From the link above:
Sprites, on the other hand, are one of the most commonly observed types of TLEs [Transient Luminous Events] — brief, colorful flashes of light that occur high above thunderstorms in the mesosphere, around 50 miles (80 kilometers) above Earth’s surface. Unlike gigantic jets, which burst upward directly from thundercloud tops, sprites form independently, much higher in the atmosphere, following powerful lightning strikes. They usually appear as a reddish glow with intricate shapes resembling jellyfish, columns, or carrots and can span tens of kilometers across. Sprites may also be accompanied or preceded by other TLEs, such as Halos and ELVEs (Emissions of Light and Very Low Frequency perturbations due to Electromagnetic Pulse Sources), making them part of a larger and visually spectacular suite of high-altitude electrical activity.
ELVEs (Emissions of Light and Very Low Frequency perturbations due to Electromagnetic Pulse Sources)
This has to be one of the most shoehorned acronyms I’ve ever seen
deleted by creator
A lot of the other light patches in this image are city lights.
The other patches of light are cities. Lightning isn’t as grainy looking. The exposure time of the shot is short so the image doesn’t blur as the station moves, so the chances are stacked against getting two flashes in the one image.
good news. climate change means more violent storms. which means more chances for pictures?
sorry forgot to link, thanks!
Space lightning is a far better name, IMHO.
That’s one hell of a quest marker.
Especially when there’s no fast-travel.
Who plays those games? No fast travel? What a way to expedite the inevitable refund tickets. 🤢🤦🏼♂️
Fast travel: for when your game doesn’t have interesting distractions along the way.
Fast travel is for games that fucked up by making a massive world but didn’t build a reason to explore it. Games with fast tavel are usually a waste of time, because they know they created something that the majority of players don’t even want to interact with. Either there shouldn’t be fast travel or you shouldn’t have made a massive world.
That’s such a shit blurt of half-facts and confident ignorance. 🤦🏼♂️ Aren’t you late for class?
I wonder where we can get a higher res picture. It bums me out these articles that talk about a nasa photo never seem to link to a the source images.
Even the NASA article has the same res.
Pretty much the norm. You know they have a higher res and its probably available if you know the magic url for it.
I dug through the astronaut photos and couldn’t find it. Neat stuff in there, a time sink, but not easily searchable.
They don’t make them readily available to the public even though they should. Its probably the cost of hosting that keeps it all buried somewhere.
How are astronauts not just constantly shitting themselves in fear?
You cannot poo in zero gravity. They have to dig around up there with their hands to manually remove excrement from their rectum
I don’t know if this is true, but I’m certainly going to repeat it as fact.
Well allow me to fix some mistakes. they can’t poo normally, really, or it’s rather hard. peristalsis probably works differently too, although it doesn’t rely on gravity per se.
Anyway, first off, it’s not 0 g, it’s “microgravity”, because technically if we’re being pedantic, there’s nowhere in the universe where there’s literally zero G as it’s kinda everywhere, but even less so for the people on the space station, they just happen to be in synchronous freefall with the station, indefinitely, which basically is the same as no gravity subjectively, but anyway.
They poop into walls nowadays, and apparently, no need for any manual helping. But @Flax_vert@feddit.uk there isn’t honestly completely wrong, even if he meant it as a joke. I don’t know how much you know about this, Flax, but here’s where you hit home:
“There’s a problem of separation,” Roberts said. “Whatever comes out of you doesn’t know it’s supposed to come away from you.” Each fecal collection bag came with a “finger cot” to allow the astronauts to manually move things along. Then they had to knead a germicide into their waste so that gas-expelling bacteria wouldn’t flourish inside the sealed bag and cause it to explode.
I wish you hadn’t… But thanks. lol
It was enlightening. However, I assure you I’ll only remember that astronauts dig into their bootyholes to scoop their poops.
don’t forget about the stuff you add to stop the poo bag from assploding. It’s important.
That’s the bit only I remembered too
explode
I believe the technical term is “ass-plode”
So, does anyone have an idea of where on Earth we’re looking at?
Anytime I look at images from the ISS, I try to identify cities, landmarks, or even a cardinal direction. I’m not very good at it…
I’m like 99% sure that were looking at the outside of Earth in the photo, but i can’t be entirely sure.
The phenomenon took place at roughly 29°N 101.5°W over Coahuila, Mexico.
I think there’s too many clouds? Anyways if I were to guess, I’d say houston (because of all of the problems in my life rn).
If I’m thinking of the same thing, I believe these come from within the center of hurricanes.
I knew lightning could strike horizontally and downward. But never realized it could go up. That just seems so weird to me.
I guess it’s less strange than ball lightning though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_lightning
They’re called Sprites!
Article says this is specifically not a sprite.
