Mysterious Glowing Balls Spotted From International Space Station

A NASA astronaut has captured a photo of glowing objects lighting up Earth’s upper atmosphere. While it may look like an alien invasion threatening our planet, these blue objects are the result of an optical phenomenon known as red sprites.

The Photography Astronaut Matthew Dominick captured this image from the International Space Station on June 3, capturing images of several bright balls lined up in a row as they filled pockets of the atmosphere. The blue balls were powered by a line of thunderstorms off the coast of South Africa, creating transient bright events, or bursts of energy that appear above the storms caused by lightning.

Beyond the spacecraft-like spheres, the image also shows subtle glimpses of bright red flashes. NASA describes these colorful streaks as a “less understood phenomenon” associated with powerful lightning events. The red flashes appear high above the clouds in the mesosphere, the third layer of the atmosphere that lies directly above the stratosphere.

The image offers a rare glimpse of lightning sprites, which are difficult to capture from the ground. Although they are associated with thunderstorms, sprites do not occur in the same clouds that produce rain lower in the atmosphere. Instead, sprites appear as high as 50 miles (80 kilometers) in the sky, according to Earth Sky.

NASA astronaut Dominic has gained widespread fame for sharing beautiful images taken from space while aboard the International Space Station. Dominic launched to the ISS on March 3 as the commander of the Crew-8 mission, and has been transmitting stunning views from the space station ever since, which he shares with others. Online.

© Matthew Dominic

Astronauts on the International Space Station typically take these types of images from the cupola (observatory module) or other windows on the ISS using Nikon D6 and D5 SLR cameras. NASA also uses cameras mounted outside the space station to capture a range of data.

In the rare case of sprites, NASA has put out a call for citizen scientists to send in their photos of the weather phenomenon to Spirituala crowdsourced database that scientists can use for research. So if you happen to catch a glimpse of these evil creatures, you know what to do.