An exceptional luminous natural phenomenon has been spotted from space. A gigantic jet of energy, which is an extremely rare type of flash of high atmosphere, was thus photographed from the international space station.
The photo is spectacular, almost hypnotic. At some 400 km altitude above the earth, astronauts from the international space station were able to attend a very rare event in the upper atmosphere. And, above all, immortalize it, thanks to a photograph which was divided on July 3, 2025 on X (ex-Twitter), by astronaut Nichole Ayers.
For laymen, what we see in the image is a kind of lightning that arises from nowhere in the sky. A flash which also has an amazing gradient ranging from pink to white to white, passing through different shades of purple and blue. And at the low end of the phenomenon, the lightning seems to strike the earth, which projects an intense light in the clouds.
A transient luminous phenomenon
But meteorologists and scientists know this kind of energy jet well: as Nichole Ayers writes, it is a “farfadet” (or “sprite” in English), that is to say a transient light phenomenon (or “Tle” for “transient luminous event”), an appellation bringing together various light events.
« Farfadets are TLE that occur above the clouds and are triggered by the intense electrical activity of thunderstorms located below Remember the astronaut. The particularly clear photo should allow specialists ” To better understand the training, the characteristics and the link between TLE and thunderstorms. »
Because these two atmospheric disturbances do not take place quite at the same altitude.
Thunderstorms, which we know well, are triggered in the troposphere, which is the lowest layer of the atmosphere: its ceiling is a maximum of 8 to 15 km altitude. More specifically, they occur via a very precise cloud training: cumulonimbus. This is where lightning comes from, in particular, with lightning and thunder.
The Tle, they are located several floors above. For beans, it is in the Mesosphere that they are noted, an area of the atmosphere ranging from 50 to 80 km above sea level. This is the penultimate layer before the space-the border is officially 100 km away, but the thermosphere, which is the last limit, climbs up to 600 km.
The flash seen from Nichole Ayers is not the first to be captured by the objective of a camera. We remember that in 2021, the French Station Thomas Pesquet had also immortalized a similar phenomenon, but without the same degree of finesse as his colleague. In the distance, we then detected an extremely bright, bluish color bubble.
The clearest photo ever taken from a “gigantic jet”
The photo has aroused great enthusiasm among specialists, like the American meteorologist Matthew Cappucci, who described it as ” The clearest photo ever taken from a gigantic jet ‘seen from above ». It was taken in the morning of July 3, 2025, when the international space station flew over Mexico and the southern United States.
« The giant jets are a subcategory of the blue jets, themselves belonging to the TLE, often qualified as lightning of high atmosphere “He said. “” There are several types of TLE, including red bean, green elves and blue jets ”. The latter, he notes, “Are the rarest. »
According to him, it is advisable to speak of a gigantic jet due to reddish summits above the phenomenon, which are ” Similar to the stem of a carrot ». This shade is a sign that the jet has reached very high altitudes, perhaps up to 80 to 95 km. Besides, above, it is with this shade that the Farfadets stand out.
« Elves and farfadets occur very high above thunderstorms, but the jets form a bridge between the storm and the stratosphere located much higher. Sometimes they even reach the basis of the Mesosphere – the altitude at which meteorites are consumed! ». But they are extremely hard to grasp, because they are highly fleeting.
« This shot is truly unique »
Matthew Cappucci
We are talking about a phenomenon that manifests itself for two or three tenths of a second (the duration can actually be more variable depending on the type of TLE and the atmospheric conditions), and spinning in the atmosphere of 10 to 145 kilometers per… second. In fact, their brevity and their speed are the two great brakes to their observation.
Moreover, Matthew Cappucci points out that the existence of these lightning lightnings was only recognized in 1989, when a scientist, RC Franz, left a camera turning all night to film the sky. Thus, he made it possible to concretely confirm the testimonies of the plane pilots, who regularly signaled these strange colorful lights in the sky.
In fact, Ayers’ photo is seen as a blessing, considering the difficulty in following these extremely rare phenomena. “” Most information comes from lucky photographers. This shot is truly unique “I said the meteorologist. That, until the next luck of a photographer who will be in the right place, at the right time.
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