Chasing Sprites in Electric Skies

Paul Smith is a night-sky fanatic and photographer. His obsession is sprites: immense jolts of light that flicker high above thunderstorms. Last October, he guided NASA scientist Dr. Burcu Kosar through the backroads of Oklahoma to catch one herself. Although she’d studied sprites for more than 15 years, she hadn’t yet chased one.

Read more about chasing sprites with Paul and Burcu: https://blogs.nasa.gov/sunspot/2022/1...

Learn about NASA’s citizen science project Spritacular: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/...

Learn about the Heliophysics Big Year: https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/solar-sy...

Image credits: Paul Smith, Frankie Lucena, Panagiotis Tsouras, Thomas Ashcraft. All imagery of sprites is copyrighted and used with permission.