(From Spaceweather.com July 7 2025 newsletter)
"SPACE LIGHTNING' PHOTOGRAPHED FROM THE ISS:On July 3, 2025, astronaut Nichole Ayers aboard the International Space Station captured a rare and breathtaking image: a Gigantic Jet bursting upward from a thunderstorm in North America. The high-resolution photograph shows a crimson bolt arcing from the cloudtops toward the edge of space.
"Just. Wow," Ayers posted after the event. "As we went over Mexico and the U.S. this morning, I caught this [Gigantic Jet] triggered by intense electrical activity in the thunderstorms below." József Bór, an atmospheric scientist at the Institute of Earth Physics and Space Science in Hungary, was thrilled by the image. "Nichole's photo sets a new standard for space-borne observations of Gigantic Jets," he says. "Such a sharply focused and detailed photo of a Gigantic Jet has never been recorded from space."
Most readers have heard of sprites, and maybe even seen one or two on a stormy summer night. They emerge from the tops of intense thunderstorms like upside-down lightning, reaching their eerie red tendrils toward space.
Gigantic jets like sprites on steroids--visually more impressive and far more rare. While sprites were discovered in 1989 and have since been photographed by the thousands, it was not until 2001-2002 that Gigantic Jets were first recorded from Puerto Rico and Taiwan. No more than a few dozen have ever been photographed with a quality approaching that of Ayers' image.
Bór is currently running a project called UHU, which alerts astronauts aboard the ISS to thunderstorms that might produce Gigantic Jets and other Transient Luminous Events (TLEs). The goal is to coordinate space-based observations with ground-based instruments to triangulate and study these elusive phenomena. Photographers from around the world are invited to contribute.
Ironically, Ayers wasn't acting on a UHU alert. She caught this Gigantic Jet by chance. Still, Bór remains hopeful: "A simultaneous observation would allow us to calculate the exact location, altitude, and dimensions of the jet, and examine the position of the initiation point relative to weather radar data. Hungarian astronaut Tibor Kapu is onboard the ISS now as part of the Ax-4 mission, and will be working with Bór to make that happen. Ayers's photo is now one of the best ever taken of a Gigantic Jet—and a promising sign of what coordinated space-Earth campaigns could uncover next."