ISS044-E-45553

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Spacecraft nadir point: 28.2° N, 109.4° W

Photo center point: 31.5° N, 99.5° W

Photo center point by machine learning:

Nadir to Photo Center: East

Spacecraft Altitude: 215 nautical miles (398km)
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Width Height Annotated Cropped Purpose Links
1000 pixels 705 pixels No Yes Earth From Space collection Download Image
540 pixels 381 pixels Yes Yes Earth From Space collection Download Image
4928 pixels 3280 pixels No No NASA's Earth Observatory web site Download Image
720 pixels 480 pixels Yes Yes NASA's Earth Observatory web site Download Image
4928 pixels 3280 pixels No No Download Image
640 pixels 426 pixels No No Download Image
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Georeferenced by human interaction - exported 2016-08-17-001717-UTC
Georeferenced by human interaction - exported 2016-08-24-010654-UTC
Georeferenced by human interaction - exported 2018-01-16-161642-UTC
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Image Caption: Red Sprites Above the U.S. and Central America

Viewing from a point over northwest Mexico, astronauts aboard the International Space Station looked northeast and shot this unusual photograph of a red sprite above the white light of an active thunderstorm (image top left). The sprite was 2,200 kilometers (1,400 miles) away, high over Missouri or Illinois; the lights of Dallas, Texas appear in the foreground. The sprite shoots up to the greenish airglow layer, near a rising moon.

These photos show the sprite's tendrils reaching as much as 100 kilometers above Earth's surface. Sprites are major electrical discharges, but they are not lightning in the usual sense. Instead, they are a cold plasma phenomenon without the extremely hot temperatures of lightning that we see underneath thunderstorms. Red sprites are more like the discharge of a fluorescent tube. Bursts of sprite energy are thought to occur during most large thunderstorm events. They were first photographed in 1989.