{"id":26107989,"date":"2026-10-02T08:54:18","date_gmt":"2026-10-02T06:54:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/?p=26107989"},"modified":"2026-10-02T08:54:18","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T06:54:18","slug":"red-sprites-lightning-above-storms-pilots-iss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/fr\/red-sprites-lightning-above-storms-pilots-iss\/","title":{"rendered":"Red Sprites: The Lightning Above Storms Pilots Reported for Decades"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n<style>.et_pb_title_container h1.entry-title { padding-top: 40px !important; }<\/style>\r\n<!-- mfsh:top -->\r\n\r\n<style>\r\n.mfsh-trigger{display:inline-flex;align-items:center;gap:10px;height:44px;padding:0 18px;margin:0 0 26px;border:2px solid #0F1720;background:#fff;color:#0F1720;font-family:inherit;font-size:14px;font-weight:700;line-height:1;letter-spacing:0;text-transform:none;cursor:pointer;box-shadow:none;transition:background .15s,color 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Above the storm, well above the cloud tops where lightning has no business being, they had seen flashes of light shooting upward into the dark. Scientists were sceptical. There was no photograph, no instrument reading, and many pilots preferred not to put it in writing.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Then, on 6 July 1989, a camera caught one by accident. Today astronauts on the International Space Station photograph them from above, and a widely shared Instagram post of red sprites seen from the ISS has brought them back into the spotlight. They are real, they are enormous, and aviation played a bigger part in proving it than most people realise.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background:#f5f5f5;border-left:4px solid #1a1a1a;padding:18px 22px;margin:24px 0\"><p style=\"margin:0 0 8px;font-weight:600\">Quick Facts<\/p><ul style=\"margin:0;padding-left:20px\"><li><strong>What they are:<\/strong> transient luminous events (TLEs), electrical discharges above thunderstorms<\/li><li><strong>Red sprites:<\/strong> roughly 50 to 90 km up, lasting milliseconds<\/li><li><strong>Blue jets:<\/strong> shoot upward from cloud tops, recorded around 30 km<\/li><li><strong>First recorded:<\/strong> 6 July 1989, by accident, at the University of Minnesota<\/li><li><strong>First aircraft campaigns:<\/strong> 1993 and 1994, led by the University of Alaska Fairbanks<\/li><li><strong>Studied from orbit:<\/strong> Space Shuttle video, ESA&rsquo;s Thor experiment and the ASIM instrument on the ISS<\/li><\/ul><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">What a Sprite Actually Is<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Sprites belong to a family of phenomena called transient luminous events, or TLEs. They appear above powerful thunderstorms, usually just after an unusually strong cloud-to-ground lightning stroke, and they happen in the mesosphere, roughly 50 to 90 kilometres up, far above the cloud tops and the cruising altitude of any airliner. Their red colour comes from nitrogen in the thin upper atmosphere glowing as the electrical breakdown passes through it. They can be tens of kilometres tall, and they are gone in a few hundredths of a second.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Sprites have relatives with equally whimsical names. Blue jets shoot upward out of the cloud tops in narrow cones. Gigantic jets reach from the top of a storm all the way up towards the edge of space. Elves are vast, expanding rings of light that last less than a thousandth of a second. Researchers have since added trolls and ghosts to the list.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" style=\"margin:0 0 24px;width:100%\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/10\/gigantic-jet-above-thunderstorm-noirlab.jpg\" alt=\"A gigantic jet rising from a thunderstorm seen from Mauna Kea, Hawaii\" style=\"width:100%;height:auto;max-width:100%;display:block\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:6px;font-style:italic\">A gigantic jet, a relative of the sprite, rising out of a storm near Hawaii, photographed by an automatic camera at the Gemini North observatory on Mauna Kea in 2017. Photo: International Gemini Observatory\/NOIRLab\/NSF\/AURA\/A. Smith \/ CC BY 4.0<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;height:0;overflow:hidden;margin:24px 0\"><iframe class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/tGPQ5kzJ9Tg\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;border:0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">The Pilots Nobody Believed<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">According to NASA&rsquo;s Earth science data programme, the atmospheric scientists Bernard Vonnegut and O. H. &ldquo;Skeet&rdquo; Vaughan collected pilots&rsquo; accounts of strange light above thunderstorms through the 1980s. The scientific establishment was not convinced by reports of &ldquo;upward lightning&rdquo;, and many pilots were unwilling to report what they had seen officially. In a 1994 press release, NASA put it plainly: pilots and others had been reporting blue or green columns of light above thunderstorms for years.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The breakthrough was an accident. On 6 July 1989, John Winckler and Robert Franz of the University of Minnesota were testing a low-light video camera for a rocket experiment. Reviewing the tape, they found a twin flash of light above the horizon over a distant storm. Once scientists knew what to look for, they went back through hundreds of hours of Space Shuttle video and found more examples, many of which flashed past too quickly to notice at normal playback speed.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background:#f8f9fa;border-left:4px solid #5C91FF;padding:20px 22px;margin:18px 0 24px;font-size:16px;line-height:1.7\"><em>&ldquo;The whole field was kickstarted because a camera was pointed in the right direction at the right time.&rdquo;<\/em><div style=\"margin-top:10px;font-size:14px;color:#555\"><strong>Burcu Kosar<\/strong> &mdash; researcher, as quoted by Smithsonian magazine<\/div><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">Chasing Sprites by Jet<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Proving what pilots had been describing ultimately took aircraft. From July 1993, a University of Alaska Fairbanks team led by Davis Sentman and Eugene Wescott flew at night aboard NASA&rsquo;s DC-8 airborne laboratory to film sprites from above the weather. In the summer of 1994 they went again, in two leased jets flown out of Oklahoma City. On 30 June 1994, over Arkansas, they recorded blue jets for the first time, and their colour video settled the question of what pilots had been seeing: sprites are red, jets are blue.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background:#f8f9fa;border-left:4px solid #5C91FF;padding:20px 22px;margin:18px 0 24px;font-size:16px;line-height:1.7\"><em>&ldquo;The flashes look like the Fourth of July, like Roman candles with fountains.&rdquo;<\/em><div style=\"margin-top:10px;font-size:14px;color:#555\"><strong>Davis Sentman<\/strong> &mdash; University of Alaska Fairbanks, principal investigator, NASA press release, July 1994<\/div><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Flying was the obvious answer. From the ground, most sprites are hidden by the very storm that produces them. From an aircraft above the weather, or from orbit, there is a clear line of sight to the sky above the storm, which is also why pilots saw them long before anyone managed to record one.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;height:0;overflow:hidden;margin:24px 0\"><iframe class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/zS_XgF9i8tc\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;border:0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">The View From the Space Station<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The International Space Station, about 400 kilometres up, is the best seat of all. Astronauts photograph sprites regularly now. NASA&rsquo;s Nichole Ayers caught one above Mexico and the southern United States on 3 July 2025, and Matthew Dominick photographed red sprites above South Africa in June 2024. The European Space Agency&rsquo;s Thor experiment, started by the Danish astronaut Andreas Mogensen, and the Atmosphere-Space Interaction Monitor (ASIM) mounted outside the Columbus module both study these events systematically.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"max-width:550px;margin:0 auto 28px\"><iframe class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/embed\/Tweet.html?id=1940810789830451563&theme=light\" style=\"width:100%;height:560px;border:none;overflow:hidden\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" style=\"margin:0 0 24px;width:100%\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/10\/red-sprite-seen-from-iss-2012.jpg\" alt=\"A red sprite above a lightning flash, photographed from the ISS in 2012\" style=\"width:100%;height:auto;max-width:100%;display:block\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:6px;font-style:italic\">A red sprite above a lightning flash, photographed by Expedition 31 astronauts in April 2012 as the ISS passed from central Myanmar towards Malaysia. Photo: NASA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There is a practical side to all this. Scientists study TLEs to understand how thunderstorms connect electrically with the upper atmosphere. NASA&rsquo;s Spritacular citizen science project, launched in 2022, now collects sprite photographs from the public, including from photographers and pilots who happen to be in the right place.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">Can You See a Sprite From an Aircraft?<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Yes, under the right conditions. You need a dark night, a large and very active thunderstorm some distance away, so that you are looking at the sky above it rather than into the cloud, and patience, because a sprite lasts only a few hundredths of a second. Many of the people who saw them first were sitting in a cockpit, and some still are.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<style>.mfq{margin:34px 0 8px}.mfq h2{font:26px\/1.3 \"Gilroy semiBold\",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color:#0d1117;padding-top:22px;margin:0 0 6px}.mfq .qa details{border-top:1px solid #5C91FF;margin:0;padding:0}.mfq .qa details:last-of-type{border-bottom:1px solid #e2e7ee}.mfq .qa summary{cursor:pointer;list-style:none;display:flex;justify-content:space-between;align-items:center;gap:16px;padding:22px 26px;font:18px\/1.7 \"Gilroy semiBold\",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color:#0d1117}.mfq .qa summary::-webkit-details-marker{display:none}.mfq .qa summary::after{content:\"+\";font:24px Helvetica,sans-serif;color:#3568e0;flex:0 0 auto}.mfq .qa details[open] summary::after{content:\"\\2013\"}.mfq .qa details:hover summary{color:#3568e0}.mfq .qa .a{font:16px\/1.7 \"Gilroy regular\",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color:#454e5e;padding:0 26px 24px}.mfq .qa .a a{color:#3568e0}@media(max-width:680px){.mfq .qa summary{padding:18px 14px;font-size:17px}.mfq .qa .a{padding:0 14px 20px}}<\/style>\r\n\r\n\r\n<section class=\"mfq\"><h2>Frequently Asked Questions<\/h2><div class=\"qa\"><details open><summary>What are red sprites?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">Red sprites are transient luminous events (TLEs): huge, brief electrical discharges in the mesosphere, roughly 50 to 90 kilometres above powerful thunderstorms. They usually follow a strong cloud-to-ground lightning stroke, glow red because of nitrogen in the thin upper atmosphere, and last only a few hundredths of a second.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>Who first saw red sprites?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">Pilots and other observers reported flashes above thunderstorms for years before scientists accepted them; Bernard Vonnegut and O. H. \"Skeet\" Vaughan collected pilot accounts in the 1980s. The first recording came by accident on 6 July 1989, when John Winckler and Robert Franz of the University of Minnesota caught one on a low-light video camera.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>How were sprites studied from aircraft?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">From July 1993, a University of Alaska Fairbanks team led by Davis Sentman and Eugene Wescott filmed sprites at night from NASA&rsquo;s DC-8. In 1994 they flew two leased jets out of Oklahoma City and, on 30 June 1994 over Arkansas, recorded blue jets for the first time, showing that sprites are red and jets are blue.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>Can pilots see sprites?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">Yes. Sprites occur far above the cruising altitude of any airliner, but from an aircraft at night, looking at the sky above a distant, very active thunderstorm, they can be seen. They last only a few hundredths of a second, which is one reason pilots&rsquo; reports were doubted for so long.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>Why do astronauts photograph sprites from the ISS?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">From about 400 kilometres up, the International Space Station looks down on thunderstorms with nothing in the way, so sprites are far easier to see than from the ground. NASA astronauts such as Nichole Ayers in July 2025 and Matthew Dominick in June 2024 have photographed them, and ESA&rsquo;s Thor experiment and the ASIM instrument study them systematically.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>What is the difference between a sprite and a blue jet?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">Red sprites flash high in the mesosphere, roughly 50 to 90 kilometres up, and are triggered by lightning below. Blue jets shoot upward directly out of the top of a thunderstorm in narrow cones and were recorded at around 30 kilometres. Both were first filmed in colour from aircraft in 1994.<\/div><\/details><\/div><\/section>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@type\":\"FAQPage\",\"mainEntity\":[{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"What are red sprites?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"Red sprites are transient luminous events (TLEs): huge, brief electrical discharges in the mesosphere, roughly 50 to 90 kilometres above powerful thunderstorms. They usually follow a strong cloud-to-ground lightning stroke, glow red because of nitrogen in the thin upper atmosphere, and last only a few hundredths of a second.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"Who first saw red sprites?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"Pilots and other observers reported flashes above thunderstorms for years before scientists accepted them; Bernard Vonnegut and O. H. \\\"Skeet\\\" Vaughan collected pilot accounts in the 1980s. The first recording came by accident on 6 July 1989, when John Winckler and Robert Franz of the University of Minnesota caught one on a low-light video camera.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"How were sprites studied from aircraft?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"From July 1993, a University of Alaska Fairbanks team led by Davis Sentman and Eugene Wescott filmed sprites at night from NASA\u2019s DC-8. In 1994 they flew two leased jets out of Oklahoma City and, on 30 June 1994 over Arkansas, recorded blue jets for the first time, showing that sprites are red and jets are blue.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"Can pilots see sprites?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"Yes. Sprites occur far above the cruising altitude of any airliner, but from an aircraft at night, looking at the sky above a distant, very active thunderstorm, they can be seen. They last only a few hundredths of a second, which is one reason pilots\u2019 reports were doubted for so long.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"Why do astronauts photograph sprites from the ISS?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"From about 400 kilometres up, the International Space Station looks down on thunderstorms with nothing in the way, so sprites are far easier to see than from the ground. NASA astronauts such as Nichole Ayers in July 2025 and Matthew Dominick in June 2024 have photographed them, and ESA\u2019s Thor experiment and the ASIM instrument study them systematically.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"What is the difference between a sprite and a blue jet?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"Red sprites flash high in the mesosphere, roughly 50 to 90 kilometres up, and are triggered by lightning below. Blue jets shoot upward directly out of the top of a thunderstorm in narrow cones and were recorded at around 30 kilometres. Both were first filmed in colour from aircraft in 1994.\"}}]}<\/script><p style=\"font-size:14px;color:#777;font-style:italic;margin-top:28px\">Sources: NASA press release on the Sprites94 aircraft campaign (July 1994); NASA Earthdata, &ldquo;The role of the Space Shuttle videotapes in the discovery of sprites, jets and elves&rdquo;; Smithsonian magazine on Nichole Ayers&rsquo; sprite photograph (2025); Space.com; ESA Thor experiment; NASA image archive.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<!-- mfsh:bottom -->\r\n\r\n<button type=\"button\" class=\"mfsh-trigger mfsh-bottom\" data-mfsh-placement=\"bottom\" aria-haspopup=\"dialog\"><svg><use href=\"#mfsh-i-share\"\/><\/svg>Share this story<\/button>\r\n\r\n<!-- \/mfsh:bottom -->\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background:#f0f4ff;border-left:4px solid #5C91FF;padding:16px 20px;margin:32px 0 8px\"><p style=\"margin:0 0 8px;font-weight:600\">Related Posts<\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/what-is-the-edge-of-space\/\">What is the Edge of Space?<\/a><\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/william-rankin-fell-through-thunderstorm-1959\/\">The Man Who Fell Through a Thunderstorm<\/a><\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/cosmic-radiation-aircrew-dose-limits-cancer-risk\/\">Cosmic Radiation and Aircrew: The Real Dose at Altitude<\/a><\/p><\/div>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Red sprites flash 50 to 90 km above thunderstorms. Pilots reported them for decades before a camera caught one in 1989; aircraft campaigns then proved them, and astronauts now photograph them from the ISS.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":26107353,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"editor_notices":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[665],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26107989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aviation-world"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Red Sprites: The Lightning Above Storms Pilots Reported for Decades | MiGFlug<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Red sprites flash 50 to 90 km above thunderstorms. 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