Yeah, annoying.

This one is better:

https://petapixel.com/assets/uploads/2025/07/Nichole-Ayers-S...

Looks like a scene from a sci-fi movie, where earth is being attacked ;-)

Thanks, that's a much better photo. You can really see the effects of light pollution well in that one too.

These are cool too, but sprites over himalayas - https://x.com/DarshanRajguru5/status/1940829392269463943

Random Twitter post, is it generated video or anything worth looking at?

Seems to match google image search https://www.google.co.uk/search?num=10&sa=X&sca_esv=8d888c12...

Very impressive video! Such sprites must have been seen at that altitude often enough in history, and as they're quite distinct from lightening I wonder if there is an historical record of them?

that is spectacular .. thx for link.

Imagine, say, Yuri Gagarin seeing this and coming down to explain this in 1961. The ISS is only 50 miles higher than Gagarin's flight.

What amazes me more then the jet, is the amount of light pollution from the cities.

Yes, and that influence reaches far outside of the cities themselves. I only realized this after moving to rural Canada where on a clear night you would see the sky in a way that you could never see it within 30 km of any major city. It is hard to describe in words, you'd have to go up North during a cold winter night and lay down and stare upwards.

Yeah - sitting on a porch near Newark, NJ, the sky is a bright hazy dome overhead.

It reminds me of growing up in a big city, too - walking along, looking at the multi-colored clouds above me.

Looks like the PR team didn't care much about the whole thing.