Image of lightning strikes on space

The US Aerospace Agency (NASA) has just published an impressive photo taken the moment a lightning appears in the atmosphere.

>>>Admire the extremely rare lightning in nature

Photo: NASA

An astronaut captured this image from the International Space Station (ISS) after installing a new device called Firestation to monitor lightning. The picture shows a cloudy view above the Arabian Peninsula, with a light purple halo showing where lightning has just fallen. The orange part at the bottom of the picture is Kuwait City, while the smaller beam of light above is the Saudi city of Hafar Al Batin.

It seems that this is a rare image, but in fact lightning is quite common, constantly ripping the earth's atmosphere at a frequency of about 50 times / second. This means that there are 4.3 million lightning strikes a day or 1.5 billion a year, according to Space.com leading a notice from NASA. However, the US space agency only paid special attention to a type of lightning: the extremely rare type emitted gamma rays , which is the form of radiation that is usually produced by dying stars and in fusion reactions.

This type of lightning is called TGF , so strong that it is enough to create antimatter in the earth's atmosphere. The TGF was not discovered until the 1990s, but it is unclear why lightning can produce this special form of radiation.