Central America by Night: Red Sprite over Lightning | International Space Station

Central America by Night: Red Sprite over Lightning | International Space Station

Expedition 73 flight engineer and NASA astronaut Nichole Ayers:"Soooooo much going on in this picture. This shot came from a time-lapse sequence that I set up in the Cupola. You can see Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama with South America off in the distance. The first eye-catching thing is the lightning strike just north of Panama City. The red line is a sprite, which is upward directed lightning that gets up into the upper atmosphere and is difficult to catch in a picture. The next thing I noticed was the reflection of that lightning strike on the structure! It was so bright you can see it on the metal exterior of the Station."

"Finally, you can see the faint red air glow above the vibrant orange of the base atmospheric layer. This is due to atomic oxygen in the f-region of the atmosphere and occurs 300-600 kilometers above Earth."

"What else catches your eye about this picture?!"

Red Sprites: These mysterious bursts of light in the upper atmosphere momentarily resemble gigantic jellyfish. One unusual feature of sprites is that they are relatively cold. They operate more like long fluorescent light tubes than hot compact light bulbs. In general, red sprites take only a fraction of a second to occur and are best seen when powerful thunderstorms are visible from the side.

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Expedition 73 Crew

Station Commander: Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) Flight Engineer Takuya Onishi
Roscosmos (Russia) Flight Engineers: Kirill Peskov, Sergey Ryzhikov, Alexey Zubritskiy

NASA Flight Engineers: Anne McClain, Nichole Ayers, Jonny Kim

An international partnership of space agencies provides and operates the elements of the International Space Station (ISS). The principals are the space agencies of the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan, and Canada.

Learn more about the important research being operated on Station:
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For more information about STEM on Station:

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Science, Technology, Engineering, Math (STEM)

Image Credit: NASA's Johnson Space Center/N. Ayers
Release Date: May 22, 2025

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