These forms of lightning are extraordinarily brief, so researchers had to go back through Mogensen’s footage frame-by-frame to pick out specific phenomena. Similarly, Pesquet’s photo of the recent transient luminous event was extracted from a longer timelapse of the night sky.
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In a caption for the new photo posted online, Pesquet noted that the ISS is well-positioned to photograph such phenomena, as it flies over the equator, where more thunderstorms occur. This particular event popped up somewhere southeast of Italy, as the picture shows.
“What is fascinating about this lightning is that just a few decades ago they had been observed anecdotally by pilots and scientists were not convinced they actually existed,” he wrote. “Fast forward a few years and we can confirm elves, and sprites are very real and could be influencing our climate too!”
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More observations like this one are sure to come and reveal more about these brilliant natural phenomena, so dazzling that they required supernatural names.
More: Record-Breaking Lightning Just Chilled in the Sky For 17 Seconds
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