Southern Lights and Shuttle Glow
22.02.1998

A background of distant stars, sinuous and spiky bands of Southern Lights (Aurora Australis), and the faint glow of charged plasma (ionized atomic gas) surrounding the Space Shuttle Discovery's engines give this photo from the STS-39 mission an eerie, otherworldly look.

Aurora Over Antarctica
20.03.2002

Looking out from the bottom of the world, strange and spectacular sights are sometimes observed. Such was the case during the long Antarctic night of 1998, as awesome aurora sub-storms were photographed above scientific outposts. Visible in the left foreground of the above photograph is the Martin A.

Missouri's Green Ribbon Sky
12.11.2004

The critics rave - "Amazing!", "Unbelievable!", "The best I've ever seen!" They aren't talking about a movie, though. Instead, even casual sky critics are remarking on November's stunning auroral displays, visible with surprising intensities well beyond the confines of high latitudes where auroral activity is normally observed.

Aurora Over Wisconsin
17.11.2004

The auroral displays of the past week are being reported as some of the most beautiful in memory. In particular, impressive auroral bands fanned out over much of eastern North America after sunset on November 8.

Burning Tree Sprite
2.08.2001

This dramatic, garishly colored image was captured with a low-light level camera on 2001 June 7. It shows what appears to be a "burning tree" above the National Cheng Kung University campus in Tainan City, Taiwan ... but the burning tree is actually a fleeting red sprite 300 kilometers away.

Gigantic Jet Lightning from Puerto Rico
29.09.2021

Have you ever seen a gigantic jet? They are extremely rare but tremendously powerful. Gigantic jets are a type of lightning discharge documented only this century that occur between some thunderstorms and the Earth's ionosphere high above them.

APOD: 2023 April 17 Б ELVES Lightning over Italy
17.04.2023

What's that red ring in the sky? Lightning. The most commonly seen type of lightning involves flashes of bright white light between clouds. Over the past 50 years, though, other types of upper-atmospheric lightning have been confirmed, including red sprites and blue jets.

Aurora in Colorado Skies
30.10.2003

Vivid auroral displays were triggered by a cloud of high energy particles from the Sun that collided with planet Earth's magnetosphere yesterday, October 29, at about 06:30 Universal Time. The collision...

Aurora Over Clouds
10.09.2003

Aurorae usually occur high above the clouds. The auroral glow is created when fast-moving particles ejected from the Sun impact air molecules high in the Earth's atmosphere. An oxygen molecule, for example, will glow in a green light when reacquiring an electron lost during a collision with a solar particle.

Red Auroral Corona
15.01.2002

Few auroras show this level of detail. This unusual display of an auroral corona occurred on Earth three days after an unusual solar event -- the fifth most powerful explosion yet recorded on the Sun. An X14-class solar flare on April 15 sent a tremendous Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) into the Solar System.