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Simeon Schmauß
Simeon Schmauß
@stim3on@fosstodon.org  ·  activity timestamp 3 weeks ago

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!]

https://youtu.be/xN2J7_rOBJY

Credit: ESA/NASA/J. Epps
Processing: Simeon Schmauß

#space #ISS #thunderstorm #lightning #giganticjet #transientluminousevent #nasa #esa

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Telephoto video shot at night from the International space station shows the limb of Earth, covered in clouds that are lightly illuminated by the moon. In the middle is a thunder storm that produces many pulsating lightning flashes. At some point, a white channel forms above the cloud, flickers a few times and then erupts as a gigantic tree like structure into the sky. The stem of the tree has a purple tone and the crown shows a deep red color. This tree structure slowly fades, the white channel flickers a few times and erupts again in another similar tree structure before it vanishes fully and the lightning flashes in the cloud also stop. The video repeats three times with 100%, then 50% and finally 25% playback speed.
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Simeon Schmauß
Simeon Schmauß
@stim3on@fosstodon.org  ·  activity timestamp 3 weeks ago

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

Upper-atmospheric lightning - Wikipedia

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Simeon Schmauß
Simeon Schmauß
@stim3on@fosstodon.org  ·  activity timestamp 3 weeks ago

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!

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Simeon Schmauß
Simeon Schmauß
@stim3on@fosstodon.org  ·  activity timestamp 3 weeks ago

Here is another incredible photo from the ISS showing a gigantic jet over Mexico.
https://fosstodon.org/@stim3on/114879673339439777

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Simeon Schmauß
Simeon Schmauß
@stim3on@fosstodon.org  ·  activity timestamp 3 weeks ago

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

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The same video as above, but it starts out very dark with only the lightning flashes visible. Then it fades to a much brighter version also showing the clouds and the gigantic jet, but there are a ton of hot pixels (they almost look like stars) sprinkeled above the video. Finally it blends to a version that has these noise artefacts removed and is a lot cleaner.
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Nature’s fireworks from space

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