Gizmodo
October 11, 2021
Last week, an astronaut aboard the International Space Station captured a lightning strike over Europe. But unlike most lightning, this electrical outburstwas not a bunch of spiky tendrils but rather a big blue bubble over the continent.
The “transient luminous event,” as such upper atmospheric lightning is known, was spotted in a timelapse taken by French astronaut Thomas Pesquet. Thissort of lightning looks different from the flashes that occur in and below storm clouds and tends to be much larger.