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The Week Ahead
| Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat | Sun | Mon |
| 🌒 13% | 🌒 21% | 🌓 30% | 🌓 40% | 🌔 50% | 🌔 61% | 🌔 72% |
| — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day
Red Sprites and Circular Elves Lightning over Italy
What's happening in the sky? Lightning. The most commonly seen type of lightning involves flashes of bright white light between clouds. Over the past 50 years, though, other types of upper-atmospheric lightning have been confirmed, including tentacled red sprites and ringed ELVES. Although both last only a small fraction of a second, sprites are brighter and easier to photograph than their more common electrical-discharge cousins. ELVES are rapidly expanding rings that are thought to be created when an electromagnetic pulse shoots upward from charged clouds and impacts the ionosphere, causing nitrogen molecules to glow. Capturing either form of lightning takes patience and experience -- capturing them both together, since they usually occur separately, is rare. The featured image is a frame from a video recorded from Possagno, Italy late last month above a distant thunderstorm over the Adriatic Sea.
Image credit: Valter Binotto — APOD is a service of NASA and Michigan Tech. U.
View on NASA APODSpace News
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NASA — 30 Mar 2026
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NASA — 27 Mar 2026
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NASA — 26 Mar 2026
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NASA — 27 Mar 2026
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