An astronaut captures an extremely rare storm phenomenon since the ISS!

This Thursday, July 3, an American astronaut currently aboard the international space station published on X (formerly Twitter) a photo ofa particularly rare storm phenomenon.

A unique photograph!

Astronaut Nichole Ayers is currently on a mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS), for several months. If astronauts aboard the space observatory must carry out important scientific experiences, they also have other occupations, such as Photographing the earth from the ISS.

This is how this American astronaut, during an overview of northern America and more precisely from the south of the United States and Mexico, was able to capture a particularly impressive light phenomenon Above a violent thunderstorm then raging in northeast Mexico near the border with Texas.

This photograph highlights A giant jetor gigantic jet In English, a light phenomenon Starting from the top of the storm and escaping towards the space. Astronauts on mission had already been able to capture similar phenomena from the international space station, but never with such quality and such proximitywhich makes the photograph of Nichole Ayers truly unique of its kind, in addition to its scientific interest.

A Gigantic Jet: What is it?

Giant jets are a subcategory of phenomena called blue jets, themselves belonging to transient luminous phenomena (transcient lumouns events or tle in English). These include the different types of light phenomena visible in high atmosphere occurring during certain thunderstorms such as sprites (Farfadets), Elves or Halos.

These phenomena were only discovered recently. The first TLE was indeed observed, or rather Filmed by chance, July 6, 1989 by researchers from the University of Minnesota who filmed the distant launch of a rocket. This very late discovery is explained by the fact that these are very difficult to observe with the naked eye.

Indeed, transient light phenomena are unwelcome in addition to being very fast (a few milliseconds most of the time) and occur above thunderstorms (between 15 and 80km above sea level), which does not facilitate their observation from the soil.

However, with technological advances, these phenomena are captured today more easilywhich explains that we see more and more images of sprites of all kinds circulating on social networks in recent years.

From what we know today, the TLE are “Triggered” by lightnings occurring in the storm cloud, lightning which generally heads towards the groundwhich seems quite paradoxical. Nevertheless the explanation is quite “simple”.

Certain lightnings collect and transport a large part of the positive charges of the cloud to the ground, which then loads the cumulonimbus negativelyunlike the atmosphere that overlooks him, the ionosphere, positively.

The imbalance thus created leads in certain cases The formation of an electric field at high altitude which can result in an electrical discharge, a discharge which excites molecules which release energy in color and generate transient light phenomenonwhich owe their color to red to the ionization of the nitrogen present in the ionosphere.

Nevertheless, transient luminous phenomena remain still quite unknown And each photograph or video of the phenomenon can still allow us to learn a little more about these phenomena, hence the importance of the capture of the astronaut Nichole Ayers, exceptional by the scarcity of the phenomenon but also by the place from which it has been captured.

Article reference:

Astronaut photographs elusive luminous event from far above EarthFox Weather (03/07/2025), Andrew Wulfeck