You may have seen pictures, but have you ever seen video of a Gigantic Jet #TLE from space?
Astronaut Jeanette Epps captured this incredible sequence on July 20th, 2024 as part of the DTU/ESA Thor-Davis experiment.
[WARNING: Video contains flashing lights!]
Credit: ESA/NASA/J. Epps
Processing: Simeon Schmauß
#space #ISS #thunderstorm #lightning #giganticjet #transientluminousevent #nasa #esa
Gigantic jets (part of the Transient Luminous Event phenomena) typically form over intense tropic thunderstorms. Current research suggest they are initiated by intra-cloud lightning that triggers a discharge up into the ionosphere.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upper-atmospheric_lightning#Gigantic_jets
You can actually see the small blue leader develop above the cloud before it fully discharges as a gigantic jet with vibrant purple and red colors.
After the jet disappears, the leader flickers a few times and surprisingly produces a second jet shortly afterwards. That's something I have not seen before!
Here is another incredible photo from the ISS showing a gigantic jet over Mexico.
https://fosstodon.org/@stim3on/114879673339439777
This video was recently published by #ESA, but it was extremely dark, so it was hard to see details.
Thanks to the ESA media team who provided me with a higher quality version, I was able to recover lots of shadow details and correct the hotpixel noise.
Original: https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Videos/2025/12/Nature_s_fireworks_from_space
