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As she flew 400 km above Earth at hypersonic speed, NASA astronaut Nichole Ayers caught a gigantic spark with blue flashes and red tentacles shooting upwards.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This electrical show was born from a summer thunderstorm in 2025. What Nichole captured from orbit is one of the rarest examples of\u00a0Transient Luminous Events\u00a0(TLEs) \u2013 atmospheric phenomena rarely visible from Earth because they take place above the clouds, at altitudes between 40 and 80 kilometres.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
In the image, a blue jet propagates into space towards the upper layers of the atmosphere. The beam of light is followed by red flashes spreading like tentacles across the sky. The magnificent event lasted less than a second.\u00a0<\/p>\n
ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen captured the\u00a0first pulsating blue jet\u00a0from space a decade ago, providing a new perspective on electrical activity at the top of thunderstorms. Scientists began to learn what types of clouds trigger such phenomena and how they may affect the chemistry of the atmosphere.\u00a0<\/p>\n
These were not isolated observations of nature\u2019s fireworks. On another night in 2024, NASA astronaut Jeanette Epps directed a high-resolution camera from the International Space Station towards a thunderstorm\u00a0in Australia. With the camera set at the fastest frame rate for slow-motion video, she managed to record for the first time\u00a0pulsating giant jet\u00a0with blue and red bursts in all its splendour from space.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Her recording is a continuation of the\u00a0Thor-Davis experiment\u00a0designed to investigate lightning in the upper atmosphere and how it might affect the concentration of greenhouse gases. The experiment is called Thor after the god of thunder, lightning and storms in Nordic mythology and is led by the Danish Technical University (DTU) together with the European Space Agency.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Lightning triggers powerful electrical bursts in our atmosphere\u00a0almost every\u00a0second, yet the inner workings of these forces of nature are still not fully understood. Capturing such phenomena is vital for scientists researching Earth\u2019s weather systems.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n