Watch: You've never seen lightning looking like this (and nor had this Space Station astronaut)
'Blue lightning' is hotly debated but not observed very often.
As the International Space Station flew 245 miles (approximately 500 km) above the Bay of Bengal, Danish astronaut Andreas Mogensen captured 245 blue flashes (video above). These were the clearest documentation of “hotly debated, but poorly observed” type of lightning known as blue jets.
Using an incredibly sensitive camera, Morgensen took photos of thunderstorms during his mission aboard the ISS in 2015. His research was part of an ongoing experiment to capture footage of rare weather events from space. According to the European Space Agency, this is the clearest footage of blue jets ever captured.
“It is not every day that you get to capture a new weather phenomenon on film, so I am very pleased with the result,” Mogensen said in an ESA statement. “According to the researchers, this is the first time they’ve ever seen this blue lightning shoot up like that,” he added.
At the end of the year, scientists hope to install a new camera at the station. It will be mounted outside to help unlock the mysteries of phenomena such as blue jets in the Earth’s upper atmosphere.
In the video below, Morgenson discusses his findings and explains the experiments he conducted.