Giant Jet from the International Space Station

Giant Jet from the International Space Station

Image Credit:
NASA,
Expedition 71 Crew,
JSC,
ESRS,
Matthew Dominick;
Processing: Simeon Schmauß

Explanation:
What’s that on the horizon?

When circling the Earth on the
International Space Station early
last month,
astronaut
Matthew Dominick
saw an unusual type of lightning just beyond the Earth’s edge: a gigantic jet.

The powerful jet appears on the left of the
featured image in red and blue.

Giant jet lightning
has only been known about for the past 23 years.

The atmospheric jets are associated with
thunderstorms and extend upwards towards
Earth’s ionosphere.

The lower part of
the frame shows the
Earth at night,
with Earth’s thin atmosphere tinted green from airglow.

City lights are visible,
sometimes resolved, but usually
creating diffuse white glows in intervening clouds.

The top of
the frame reveals distant stars in the dark night sky.

The nature of
gigantic jets and their possible association with other types of
Transient Luminous Events (TLEs) such as
blue jets and
red sprites remains an
active topic of research.