PREVIEW

An astronaut aboard the International Space Station captured a red sprite, a rarely seen atmospheric phenomenon associated with lightning.

Storm clouds obscure the nighttime city lights of the U.S. Midwest and South. The space station’s Canadarm2 robotic arm appears as the dark, elongated feature in the center of the image sequence.

Timelapse videos captured from the station are created by shooting a long sequence of photographs at short intervals. The images are stitched together, using approximately 25 to 29 frames per second, to create a video that showcases thousands of miles of Earth within just a few minutes.

This trimmed timelapse spans 19 seconds and provides views of northern Mexico and southern and midwestern U.S. states, and ends as the station approaches the Great Lakes and western Canada.
Flashes of lightning illuminate the storm system and produce one large sprite, visible to the right of the Canadarm2 at 15 seconds into the video (above) and in the photo (below). Sprites—an atmospheric phenomenon associated with powerful lightning events—occur in the mesosphere. This layer of the atmosphere is about 50-85 kilometers (31-53 miles) above Earth’s surface, far higher than the tops of cumulonimbus clouds associated with thunderstorms.