Mysterious red lights glowing in Earth's atmosphere spotted by astronauts

Despite the amount of space exploration we’ve achieved over the years, there is still so little we know about what’s out there beyond our Earth’s orbit.

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) undergo difficult and dangerous tasks including spacewalks to fix parts of its infrastructure.

Astronauts have recalled some pretty strange sightings from their time spent above our atmosphere.

NASA explained that they are called 'red sprites' (NASA/Matthew Dominick)

One spooked NASA astronaut even called ground control after seeing what he thought to be an alien floating through space.

More recently, one member on the ISS took a bizarre shot of glowing red lights in the Earth’s atmosphere.

The photo was snapped by Matthew Dominick, the commander of SpaceX Crew-8 mission and was captured on June 3, 2024.

The eerie lights appear to be hanging in space but according to NASA, these aren’t actually UFOs or aliens from outer space, they say there’s a perfectly rational explanation.

Apparently, the unusual lights are known as ‘red sprites’ which typically form above thunder clouds in the mesosphere - the upper part of the atmosphere.

The European Space Agency previously captured a red sprite (ESA)

At around 53 miles above the surface, the red lights stand vertically like some weird kind of spacecraft.

According to the coordinates, they were right above the coast of South Africa.

By sharing this picture, NASA aims to encourage people to send their own images of sprites or other oddities in the sky.

Dominick posted the picture to X, formerly Twitter, and asked for further information: “Super lucky a few weeks ago when shooting a timelapse of a lightning storm off the coast of South Africa.

“One of the frames in the timelapse had a red sprite. If there are any red sprite experts out there I would enjoy tips on how to capture more of these.

“Clearly, look for lightning storms, but I'm thinking the stronger the storm the better.”

The strange image was captured from the International Space Station (SCIEPRO/Getty)

Space physicist Dr Burcu Kosar, principal investigator for Spritacular, explained what the project aims to achieve: “People capture wonderful images of sprites, but they're shared sporadically over the internet.

“Most of the scientific community is unaware of these captures.”

In a press release about the red sprites, the space agency asked followers to share information to help their scientists study the phenomena in greater detail.

It said: “While space station crew hunt for TLEs from space, you can help right here on Earth: send your photographs of sprites and other TLEs to NASA’s citizen science project, Spritacular, to contribute to a crowdsourced database that professional scientists can use for research.”

Astronauts have experienced their fair share of bizarre sightings in space (quantic69/Getty)

NASA’s press release explained that ‘Transient Luminous Events (TLEs), including red sprites, are colorful bursts of energy that appear above storms as a result of lightning activity occurring in and below storms on Earth’.

These types of TLEs and others are often snapped by accident, especially when taking a time lapse of the Earth using a wide focal-length lens.

However, when on the ISS, they tend to capture time lapses using the Atmosphere-Space Interactions Monitor (ASIM) which is typically used to collect data for scientific research.

Hopefully someone else will be able to capture the red electrical bursts in the future.