NASA astronaut Matthew Dominick just so happened to be shooting a lighting storm off the coast of South Africa from the International Space Station (ISS), when he managed to stumble upon an extremely rare red sprite. The latter occurs during large-scale electric discharges in the mesosphere, high above thunderstorm clouds.
Red sprites are normally triggered by the discharges of positive lightning between an underlying thundercloud and the ground. Sometimes they are mistaken for upper-atmospheric lightning, but red sprites are actually cold plasma phenomena that lack the hot channel temperatures of tropospheric lightning. The image you see above was shot with a 50mm lens, f1.2, 1/5s at ISO 3200.
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If there are any red sprite experts out there I would enjoy tips on how to capture more of these. Clearly, look for lightning storms, but I’m thinking the stronger the storm the better and over water might help see them better,” said Dominick.
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