Transient Luminous Events: A Display of Lights Above the Storm

In June 2024, an astronaut aboard the International Space Station captured a photo that seemed to show UFOs or alien spaceships. Alongside the orb-like shapes, subtle hints of bright red flashes appeared in the image. NASA described these colorful streaks as a “less understood phenomenon” linked to powerful lightning events. The photo actually captured natural phenomena known as blue jets and red sprites – forms of lightning that shoot upward into the sky rather than down toward the Earth.

Andreas Mogensen, an astronaut with the European Space Agency, was the first to capture a blue jet on film from above, shooting into space. “In January 2017, researchers at Denmark’s National Space Institute published their analysis of his (Andreas Mogensen’s) observations in Geophysical Research Letters. Mogensen was able to capture clear video as the station flew over the Bay of Bengal, and they were amazed by what that video showed. Olivier Chanrion, lead author of the publication, reported that, ‘During 160 seconds of video footage, 245 pulsating blue discharges were observed, corresponding to a rate of about 90 per minute.’ One of the blue jets observed reached 25 miles (40 kilometers) above sea level.”

The red sprite is another type of Transient Luminous Events. These events have been theorized to exist for many centuries, but the first one was caught on camera in 1989 by accident. Scientists at the University of Minnesota had been testing a camera for an upcoming rocket mission. Red sprites are visible for only a few milliseconds before they disappear. Although they only appear above lightning storms, they are not actually lightning. While lightning is very hot, red sprites are actually cold. Let’s explore how this phenomenon works.

Let’s move from the cold glow of red sprites to the fleeting brilliance of Elves, another extraordinary Transient Luminous Event. Elves were recorded for the first time in 1990 by a space shuttle passing over French Guiana. They occur approximately 100 kilometers above the Earth and span about 400 kilometers in width. Elves are characterized by their red color. Because Elves are so large and last only a single millisecond, they are extremely difficult to capture on regular video.