NASA astronaut captures rare 'gigantic jet' from space

a year ago by Dr. Moose to c/pics

NASA astronaut Nichole Ayers captured a stunning photograph of one of nature's most elusive phenomena from the International Space Station on July 3, 2025, initially believing she had documented a sprite, a rare form of atmospheric lightning, only to discover she had captured something even more extraordinary: a gigantic jet.

"Nichole Ayers caught a rare and spectacular form of a TLE from the International Space Station β€” a gigantic jet," confirmed Dr. Burcu Kosar, Principal Investigator of NASA's Spritacular project. The discovery represents one of the clearest views of this atmospheric phenomenon ever documented from space.

Vorticity 82 points a year ago path: 0 18769316, hotness: undefined, score: 82, children: 10
Doll_Tow_Jet-ski 146 points a year ago

From the website:

Gigantic jets are a powerful type of electrical discharge that extends from the top of a thunderstorm into the upper atmosphere. They are typically observed by chance β€” often spotted by airline passengers or captured unintentionally by ground-based cameras aimed at other phenomena. Gigantic jets appear when the turbulent conditions at towering thunderstorm tops allow for lightning to escape the thunderstorm, propagating upwards toward space. They create an electrical bridge between the tops of the clouds (20 km) and the upper atmosphere (100 km), depositing a significant amount of electrical charge.

path: 0 18769316 18769584, hotness: undefined, score: 146, children: 7
jaybone 33 points a year ago

Thank you! Can’t believe I had to scroll this far for an explanation. So then, are all those other patches of light also electrical storms?

Also what is a sprite in this context?

path: 0 18769316 18769584 18771641, hotness: undefined, score: 33, children: 5
Boddhisatva 33 points a year ago
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hikaru755 23 points a year ago

ELVEs (Emissions of Light and Very Low Frequency perturbations due to Electromagnetic Pulse Sources)

This has to be one of the most shoehorned acronyms I've ever seen

path: 0 18769316 18769584 18771641 18773258 18782399, hotness: undefined, score: 23, children: 1
Vorticity 9 points a year ago

A lot of the other light patches in this image are city lights.

path: 0 18769316 18769584 18771641 18773735, hotness: undefined, score: 9, children: 0
Deme 7 points a year ago

The other patches of light are cities. Lightning isn't as grainy looking. The exposure time of the shot is short so the image doesn't blur as the station moves, so the chances are stacked against getting two flashes in the one image.

path: 0 18769316 18769584 18771641 18773480, hotness: undefined, score: 7, children: 0
flandish 6 points a year ago

good news. climate change means more violent storms. which means more chances for pictures?

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drmoose 13 points a year ago

sorry forgot to link, thanks!

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KneeTitts 1 point a year ago

So.. I click on the thumbnail and it shows me a smaller image. cool.

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Menschlicher_Fehler 62 points a year ago

That's one hell of a quest marker.

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Tedesche 7 points a year ago

Especially when there’s no fast-travel.

path: 0 18769603 18774208, hotness: undefined, score: 7, children: 4
otter 2 points a year ago

Who plays those games? No fast travel? What a way to expedite the inevitable refund tickets. πŸ€’πŸ€¦πŸΌβ€β™‚οΈ

path: 0 18769603 18774208 18783136, hotness: undefined, score: 2, children: 3
DarkDarkHouse 3 points a year ago

Fast travel: for when your game doesn't have interesting distractions along the way.

path: 0 18769603 18774208 18783136 18785056, hotness: undefined, score: 3, children: 0
Cethin -1 points a year ago

Fast travel is for games that fucked up by making a massive world but didn't build a reason to explore it. Games with fast tavel are usually a waste of time, because they know they created something that the majority of players don't even want to interact with. Either there shouldn't be fast travel or you shouldn't have made a massive world.

path: 0 18769603 18774208 18783136 18785392, hotness: undefined, score: -1, children: 1
otter 0 points a year ago

That's such a shit blurt of half-facts and confident ignorance. πŸ€¦πŸΌβ€β™‚οΈ Aren't you late for class?

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prole 42 points a year ago

I wish every magical-thinking person would just put like 50% more effort in and actually learn about science, because it's so much cooler when you know it's actually real and why it's happening.

path: 0 18784318, hotness: undefined, score: 42, children: 5
nymnympseudonym 12 points a year ago

I wish every magical-thinking person would join the reality-based community.

I wish the magical-thinking community were not treated like adults and given the ability to vote. That's just carelessness with our Democracy.

path: 0 18784318 18785485, hotness: undefined, score: 12, children: 1
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA 2 points a year ago

Same, but right now my magical thinking tinfoil cap (the ability to mask as a right wing evangelical) might be the only armor I have under fascism

path: 0 18784318 18785485 18787394, hotness: undefined, score: 2, children: 0
MojoMcJojo 5 points a year ago

Learning about science is like learning about magic.

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Flax_vert 1 point a year ago

I know. It must have been designed.

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GreenKnight23 1 point a year ago

if it's not because of Republican Jesus I don't need to know.

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Flax_vert 24 points a year ago

1000082555

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vinnymac 21 points a year ago

I knew lightning could strike horizontally and downward. But never realized it could go up. That just seems so weird to me.

I guess it’s less strange than ball lightning though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_lightning

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Zoomboingding 4 points a year ago path: 0 18769599 18780531, hotness: undefined, score: 4, children: 1
prole 8 points a year ago

Article says this is specifically not a sprite.

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MehBlah 19 points a year ago

I wonder where we can get a higher res picture. It bums me out these articles that talk about a nasa photo never seem to link to a the source images.

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RememberTheApollo_ 13 points a year ago path: 0 18774481 18782014, hotness: undefined, score: 13, children: 3
MehBlah 5 points a year ago

Pretty much the norm. You know they have a higher res and its probably available if you know the magic url for it.

path: 0 18774481 18782014 18782536, hotness: undefined, score: 5, children: 2
RememberTheApollo_ 2 points a year ago

I dug through the astronaut photos and couldn't find it. Neat stuff in there, a time sink, but not easily searchable.

path: 0 18774481 18782014 18782536 18784880, hotness: undefined, score: 2, children: 1
MehBlah 1 point a year ago

They don't make them readily available to the public even though they should. Its probably the cost of hosting that keeps it all buried somewhere.

path: 0 18774481 18782014 18782536 18784880 18795410, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 0
LinguisticKerosene 17 points a year ago

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photonic_sorcerer 15 points a year ago

NASA can't fool me. That's a demon summoning if I've ever seen one.

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drmoose 10 points a year ago

"New rift portal has opened"

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MehBlah 4 points a year ago

Its Pugsley Addams if its anything at all.

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ivanafterall 15 points a year ago

How are astronauts not just constantly shitting themselves in fear?

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Flax_vert 10 points a year ago

You cannot poo in zero gravity. They have to dig around up there with their hands to manually remove excrement from their rectum

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ivanafterall 9 points a year ago

I don't know if this is true, but I'm certainly going to repeat it as fact.

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Dasus 16 points a year ago

Well allow me to fix some mistakes. they can't poo normally, really, or it's rather hard. peristalsis probably works differently too, although it doesn't rely on gravity per se.

Anyway, first off, it's not 0 g, it's "microgravity", because technically if we're being pedantic, there's nowhere in the universe where there's literally zero G as it's kinda everywhere, but even less so for the people on the space station, they just happen to be in synchronous freefall with the station, indefinitely, which basically is the same as no gravity subjectively, but anyway.

They poop into walls nowadays, and apparently, no need for any manual helping. But @Flax_vert@feddit.uk there isn't honestly completely wrong, even if he meant it as a joke. I don't know how much you know about this, Flax, but here's where you hit home:

"There's a problem of separation," Roberts said. "Whatever comes out of you doesn't know it's supposed to come away from you." Each fecal collection bag came with a "finger cot" to allow the astronauts to manually move things along. Then they had to knead a germicide into their waste so that gas-expelling bacteria wouldn't flourish inside the sealed bag and cause it to explode.

path: 0 18774730 18780983 18782319 18782550, hotness: undefined, score: 16, children: 5
diptchip 7 points a year ago

I wish you hadn’t... But thanks. lol

path: 0 18774730 18780983 18782319 18782550 18783642, hotness: undefined, score: 7, children: 3
nymnympseudonym 3 points a year ago

explode

I believe the technical term is "ass-plode"

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BreadOven 12 points a year ago

TLE? Did I miss the definition? Would be nice to have it in the body text.

Edit: went to the article which thankfully someone else posted. Transient Luminous Event is a TLE.

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Jerb322 2 points a year ago

So....they don't know what it is either?

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BreadOven 2 points a year ago

Not sure. I definitely don't know what it is haha.

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EffortlessEffluvium 1 point a year ago

It's a Walmart. Specifically, the Tire and Lube Express.

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badbytes 11 points a year ago

Space lightning is a far better name, IMHO.

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ectofunk 8 points a year ago

Cool, a new wallpaper

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derry 7 points a year ago

Sorry everyone, I knew trying everything on the taco bell menu was a bad idea but I couldn't stop

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Takeshidude 6 points a year ago

Looks like the second impact

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Jimmycrackcrack 2 points a year ago

It's the lance of Longinus!

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spizzat2 5 points a year ago

So, does anyone have an idea of where on Earth we're looking at?

Anytime I look at images from the ISS, I try to identify cities, landmarks, or even a cardinal direction. I'm not very good at it...

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lemming741 15 points a year ago path: 0 18784201 18786194, hotness: undefined, score: 15, children: 0
CmdrShepard49 4 points a year ago

I'm like 99% sure that were looking at the outside of Earth in the photo, but i can't be entirely sure.

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dogs0n 2 points a year ago

I think there's too many clouds? Anyways if I were to guess, I'd say houston (because of all of the problems in my life rn).

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buddascrayon 1 point a year ago

If I'm thinking of the same thing, I believe these come from within the center of hurricanes.

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echodot 2 points a year ago

Pretty sure someone's just opened a portal to hell.

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OhVenus_Baby 1 point a year ago

Serious question.

If we could harness these lightning strikes and convert them into usable electricity. Would it change our planet? Would it drain the planet of some force of energy keeping us alive?

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quokka1 6 points a year ago path: 0 18783274 18784384, hotness: undefined, score: 6, children: 0
Revan343 6 points a year ago

I doubt it, lightning strikes are just static discharges

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OhVenus_Baby 1 point a year ago

Right but energy doesn't end it just changes forms. Surely lightning has effects in our entire planet in some form or fashion we may or may not know about yet or it wouldn't be here.

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gens 4 points a year ago

It's high voltage and high current, but really short time. Voltage times current is power, power times time is energy. So not much energy really.

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z4x15 3 points a year ago

Not a physicist, but here is my understanding.

It shouldn't. We can't store that much energy with current technology. Energy can't be created or destroyed, so we would be using it for some other purpose and converting it to something else. Lightning strikes help in the nitrogen cycle, but that happens in the air. I doubt this would be impacted by us capturing the energy.

If we are able to store that much energy, we would be advanced enough to keep our planet safe, hopefully. It will bring different problems. Somewhat related to this, you should read about Kardashev scale and Dyson spheare.

Putting up wind farms should have more impact since it can change wind patterns, but the new wind turbines might be a lot better.

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pineapplelover 1 point a year ago

Not really but I found this bright star near us and all we have to do is lay out some panels to capture its energy.

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dogs0n 1 point a year ago

I don't think we could ever take so much energy that we'd suck the planet dry of it. I think a lot of the energy comes from solar energy through to our atmosphere or sumthing and there's a lot of solar energy probably.

Im really dumb tho so probably dont read this post unless its too late because this disclaimer is the second paragraph.

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