NASA astronaut Don Pettit captured breathtaking video of a rare atmospheric phenomenon from his perch high above Earth on the ...

NASA astronaut Don Pettit is known for snapping stunning space imagery from the International Space Station (ISS), and his ...

Two astrophotographers captured breathtaking video of over 105 red sprites over Tibet during a massive thunderstorm.

Unlike normal lightning that strikes downward from clouds to ground, red sprites flash upward from the tops of thunderclouds toward space, reaching heights of 50 to 90 kilometers above Earth.

The thermosphere (53-375 miles up) shares space with the ionosphere and usually has a climbing temperature. When objects pass ...

These are not animated characters but real atmospheric phenomena known as electrical discharges that occur high above ... sprites were triggered by high-peak current positive cloud-to-ground ...

A strange “red lightning ” phenomenon photographed from near a lake site in the southern Tibetan plateau in 2022 was driven by thunderstorms over the Himalayan region, scientists discover in a new ...

Skygazers and scientists have long wondered what causes sprite lightning. They knew it occurred in Earth's upper atmosphere, or mesosphere, unlike the low cloud-to-ground lightning most of us ...

The photo, titled Cosmic Fireworks, won the Skyscapes category of the 2023 Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition, hosted by the Royal Observatory Greenwich. This breathtaking image not only ...

“By analyzing the parent lightning discharges, we discovered that the sprites were triggered by high-peak current positive cloud-to-ground lightning strikes within a massive mesoscale convective ...

These are bright, colorful flashes of light faster than lightning and are sometimes referred to as "sprites." Pettit was able to view the sprites from directly above, looking down at what is known ...

Sprites are created when electrical discharges created by lightning shoot upward, creating bursts of plasma in the ionosphere, found around 50 miles (80 km) above Earth's surface. They were not ...