Chasing Sprites in Electric Skies

  • Released Thursday, October 27, 2022
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Paul Smith is a night-sky fanatic and photographer. His obsession is sprites: immense jolts of light that flicker high above thunderstorms. Last October, he guided NASA scientist Dr. Burcu Kosar through the backroads of Oklahoma to catch one herself. Although she’d studied sprites for more than 15 years, she hadn’t yet chased one.

Image credits: Paul Smith, Frankie Lucena, Panagiotis Tsouras, Thomas Ashcraft. All imagery of sprites is copyrighted and used with permission.

Watch this video on the NASA Goddard YouTube channel.

Complete transcript available.

Image credits: Paul Smith, Frankie Lucena, Panagiotis Tsouras, Thomas Ashcraft. All imagery of sprites is copyrighted and used with permission.

Music credits: “The Beauty Beyond” by Jeremy Noel William Abbott [PRS], Vasco [PRS]; “Outer Orbit” by Alexander Ryder Mcnair [ASCAP], Harry Gregson Williams [BMI], Ho Ling Tang [BMI]; “Wonderful Orbit” by Tom Furse Fairfax Cowan [PRS]; “Starlights” by Marc Teitler [PRS], Vasco [PRS]; “A Tranquil End” by Luke Gordon [PRS]; “Virtual Tidings” by Andrew Michael Britton [PRS], David Stephen Goldsmith [PRS]; “Winter Aurora” by Samuel Karl Bohn [PRS]; “Lava Flow” and “Water Dance” by Ben Niblett [PRS], Jon Cotton [PRS].

Viewing from a point over northwest Mexico, astronauts aboard the International Space Station looked northeast and shot this unusual photograph of a red sprite above the white light of an active thunderstorm. In the top image, the sprite was 2,200 kilometers (1,400 miles) away, high over Missouri or Illinois; the lights of Dallas, Texas appear in the foreground. The sprite shoots up to the greenish airglow layer, near a rising moon. Learn more here.Credit: NASA

Viewing from a point over northwest Mexico, astronauts aboard the International Space Station looked northeast and shot this unusual photograph of a red sprite above the white light of an active thunderstorm. In the top image, the sprite was 2,200 kilometers (1,400 miles) away, high over Missouri or Illinois; the lights of Dallas, Texas appear in the foreground. The sprite shoots up to the greenish airglow layer, near a rising moon. Learn more here.

Credit: NASA

Transient Luminous Event Chasers

A short video that highlights photographers from all over the world that have become experts at capturing Transient Luminous Events on camera.

Complete transcript available.

Watch this video on the NASA Sun Science Facebook page.

Credit: NASA

All sprites imagery is copyrighted and used with permission.

Q&A with Dr. Burcu Kosar

Dr. Burcu Kosar discusses how she started Spritacular and how the citizen science project will lay the groundwork for the first-ever catalog of Transient Luminous Events.

Watch this video on the NASA Sun Science Facebook page.

Credit: NASA

All sprites imagery is copyrighted and used with permission.

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Credits

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NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

This page was originally published on Thursday, October 27, 2022.
This page was last updated on Wednesday, May 3, 2023 at 11:43 AM EDT.

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