Astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) managed to take a strange picture from space in the form of two wisps of blue light shimmering over Earth's atmosphere.
The picture was taken last year by an unnamed crew member of Ekpedisi 66 as the ISS passed through the South China Sea. The photo was released online on October 9, 2022 by NASA Earth Observatory.
The two wisps of light may look like alien aliens, but the fact is that they are natural phenomena that are not related but occur simultaneously. The first wisp of light seen under the image is a large lightning strike that occurred somewhere in the Gulf of Thailand.
Lightning strikes are usually difficult to see from the ISS because they are covered in clouds. But the lightning this time occurred next to a large circular gap at the top of the clouds causing lightning to illuminate the walls around the cloudy caldera-like structure, creating a conspicuous luminous ring.
While the second blue plume occurred in Vietnam and Hainan Island, the southernmost region of China, although most of the light was covered with clouds. The second blue blob that can be seen at the top right of the image is the result of light deflected from the moon.
This happens when the light reflected back from the sun passes through the Earth's atmosphere and turns it into bright blue blobs. This effect is caused by some scattering of moonlight from small particles in the Earth's atmosphere.
Different colors of light have different wavelengths that affect their interaction with atmospheric particles. Blue light has the shortest wavelength so it is very likely to spread.
The same effect also explains why the sky appears blue during the day: it is because the blue wavelength of sunlight spreads out the most so that it becomes more clearly visible to the human eye.
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