Sprite over North America: Labeled version | International Space Station

Sprite over North America: Labeled version | International Space Station

Expedition 73 flight engineer and NASA astronaut Nichole Ayers: "Just. Wow. As we went over Mexico and the U.S. this morning, I caught this sprite. Sprites are TLEs or Transient Luminous Events, that happen above the clouds and are triggered by intense electrical activity in the thunderstorms below. We have a great view above the clouds, so scientists can use these types of pictures to better understand the formation, characteristics, and relationship of TLEs to thunderstorms."

Red Sprites: These mysterious bursts of light in the upper atmosphere momentarily resemble gigantic jellyfish. One unusual feature of sprites is that they are relatively cold. They operate more like long fluorescent light tubes than hot compact light bulbs. In general, red sprites take only a fraction of a second to occur and are best seen when powerful thunderstorms are visible from the side.

Learn more here: https://uhu.epss.hu/en/tle-phenomena/

Follow Expedition 73:

https://blogs.nasa.gov/spacestation/

Expedition 73 Crew

Station Commander: JAXA Flight Engineer Takuya Onishi
Roscosmos (Russia) Flight Engineers: Kirill Peskov, Sergey Ryzhikov, Alexey Zubritskiy

NASA Flight Engineers: Anne McClain, Nichole Ayers, Jonny Kim

An international partnership of space agencies provides and operates the elements of the International Space Station (ISS). The principals are the space agencies of the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan, and Canada.

Learn more about the important research being operated on Station:
https://www.nasa.gov/iss-science

For more information about STEM on Station:

https://www.nasa.gov/stemonstation
Science, Technology, Engineering, Math (STEM)

Image Credit: NASA/JSC/Nichole Ayers
Release Date: July 7, 2025

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