The unusual “spots” appeared as a result of two natural processes.
An astronaut on board the International Space Station , took a picture of the night Earth with two mysterious blue “spots” in the atmosphere. They may seem like something otherworldly, but in fact they were the result of two unrelated natural phenomena that happened at the same time, according to Space.com.
It is noted that the picture was taken last year by the crew of the ISS, whose composition called when the station passed over the South China Sea. And on October 9 of this year, it was published by NASA Earth Observatory.
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The first “spot”, which can be seen at the bottom of the image, is a massive lightning strike in the Gulf of Thailand. As a rule, lightning strikes cannot be seen from the ISS because they are hidden by clouds. But this strike coincided with a large flash in the upper layers, causing lightning to illuminate the surrounding “walls” of the caldera-like cloud structure.
The second spot, visible in the upper right corner, was the result of the bending of moonlight. The orientation of Earth's natural satellite relative to the ISS means that the light it reflects from the Sun passes straight through the planet's atmosphere, turning it into a bright blue spot with a faint halo. According to the Earth Observatory, this effect is caused by the fact that part of the moonlight is scattered on tiny particles in the Earth's atmosphere.
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Earlier, NASA astronaut Bob Hines published images of the spectacular northern lights, which he was able to see from space. It was observed on August 17 and was the result of a moderate flare that occurred on the Sun.
