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In the above video, at about 1:21 (and at other places, but most prominent at 1:21), there are flashes of light that can be seen from the ISS. Most of then are in coastal areas or in sea (small islands) and appear rather grouped than scattered equally without any definitive pattern. My guess is that they can be light houses.. but what do you think?

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Due to the way the flashes scatter among the clouds, I'd say that they are lightning contained within thunderheads/conflicting air masses.

But lightning should be very quick and hence shouldn't appear in a time lapse.. It is still as quick in time lapse as it would be in normal speed. :O

The time lapse catches the strikes by chance. There are ~100 lightning flashes per second globally (80% are in-cloud flashes and 20% are cloud-to-ground flashes) and ~2000 thunderstorms occurring simultaneously on Earth. [1]

That's a huge opportunity to catch lightning flashes over a high quality time lapse from August to October 2011 (the time span of the video).

The astronauts' real-time views from the ISS' windows must be amazing. If I were up there in the ISS, I'd never get any work done because I'd be staring out the window the whole time!

[1] http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/wea00/wea00239.htm

Looks like lightning.

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