To the sci-fi minded, strange lights hovering above Earth can mean only one thing…And yet, when astronaut Matthew Dominick spotted eerie flashes of colour in the planet’s atmosphere, his mind didn’t jump to an alien invasion. Instead, the NASA pro – who is currently spending six months on board the International Space Station (ISS) – took pictures of the dazzling celestial light show, which he knew to be the product of a perfectly natural, but mysterious, phenomenon.
The dazzling blasts were what are known as “red sprites” – strange spectacles associated with powerful lightning events. They are an example of colourful bursts of energy called transient luminous events (TLEs), which appear above particularly eventful storms, usually in the upper atmosphere.
