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National Geographic

When you hear the word "lightning," it probably conjures an image of a bright white bolt, zigzagging down out of a stormy sky. But in Earth's upper atmosphere, lightning can look very different. Transient luminous events—TLEs—are lightning that occur high above the clouds and can look like red branching roots, green glows, or blue or purple darting lights. Captured photographically for the first time in 1989, scientists are now able to crowdsource images of TLEs from all over the world and hope to use these images to start identifying patterns in these mysterious electrical phenomena. Read more about what causes TLEs at the link in bio. Photographs by Paul Smith (@paulmsmithphotography)

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Comments
3

18 hours ago

Beautiful 🔥

Maci Ward
1458

1 days ago

What in the stranger things

CristaBel † 🧿
336

1 days ago

Imagine what the ancients thought seeing this 😍

Jesus Christ Forever 🙏🏼✝️🌎
228

1 days ago

Beautiful. God’s natural fireworks in the sky!!

Hannah.
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1 days ago

sprites. I’m happy to see Paul’s work has made it to NatGeo! ❤️

Bender
55

1 days ago

I love you Nat Geo. Thank you for making life, science, animals and learning fun.

Eric Houck
28

1 days ago

@paulmsmithphotography You deserve this man! 👏👏👏 I’ve been wondering when @natgeo or @natgeoyourshot was going to publish some of these! Congratulations!

Cobb D. Tanner
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12 hours ago

Nice try Placidusax I know that’s you

AJAX
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19 hours ago

Look here I know astral plane when I see astral plane

Michaela Skovranova
5

1 days ago

🔥

Bekir Serbest
4

15 hours ago

Elden Ring vibes 🔥😍

Nayantara Parikh
3

1 days ago

Gwi-ma

Carolina Franccesca 𓁿
2

12 hours ago

@aliumeart nature spirit dancing ✨

Travis Burke
2

13 hours ago

Whoah, this is amazing! I had never seen these before but I would love to photograph them 😍

Mallori Roe
1

15 hours ago

It’s the Upside Down ❤️

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Australia

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