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

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.

A strange “red lightning ” phenomenon photographed from near a lake site in the southern Tibetan plateau in 2022 was driven ...

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

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

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 ...

Colorful sprites, or transient luminous events, flash above clouds in a video taken by NASA ... Luminous Events (TLE ) or upper atmospheric lightning." The video captures around six seconds ...

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 ...