A gigantic jet caught on camera: A spritacular moment for NASA astronaut | Hacker News Reader

A gigantic jet caught on camera: A spritacular moment for NASA astronaut

science.nasa.gov

395 pointsacossta92 comments

Pilot had been reporting things like that for years but nobody would believe them because they weren't "trained observers", until a pilot caught it on film in the 80's.

Same with sailors, who've been repairing rogue waves for centuries, but it wasn't until it was recorded scientifically on an oil rig that scientists took it seriously.

Still an awesome picture.

In 1995 or 1997, can't remember which, I flew from Belo Horizonte to Miami (if the former) or NYC (latter). When we were flying over what I think is the Caribbean, I recall seeing "upward lightnings". They were absolutely majestic. I was absolutely awaken. I don't remember much else as I was a kid but seeing this text made me come back to this beautiful memory.

Upward lightnings happen frequently enough, there is a guy called Tom Warner that has done pretty extensive research into this including high speed photography.

Here is his website[0] very cool stuff indeed.

0. https://ztresearch.blog/2014/07/03/unique-image-showing-ligh...

I was shooting time lapse during a thunder storm and caught a ground to sky lightning bolt. I assumed that if I had an image of one that it must be a fairly common kind of thing, because I know I don't have that kind of luck. Then again, I also had a time lapse of the Milky Way that someone point out something I had caught being a meteor coming straight at camera recognizable by the ionized trail it left behind which took minutes to dissipate. It definitely helps to have a shutter open. You'll miss 100% of the shots you don't take (to borrow a sports phrase).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upper-atmospheric_lightning

> In ensuing decades, high altitude electrical discharges were reported by aircraft pilots and discounted by meteorologists until the first direct visual evidence was documented in 1989.

From your link.

My favorite variant of that kind of story: https://blog.nature.org/2018/01/12/australian-firehawk-rapto...

Classism in higher education, science, etc is sadly all too common. Even those in the 'correct' class have uphill battles as science very much is vulnerable to ego, politics, etc and reform can be difficult, or in some cases impossible, regardless of merit.

It makes you wonder what obvious thing is being ignored right now due to these politics. I would not be 100% surprised if people in the future accepted things like 'ghost experiences' as normal things. There's just way too many stories and experiences to entirely write it off, but who knows. I feel like hand wavey excuses like third-man, carbon monoxide suddenly everywhere, thought experiments about brains releasing chemicals, calling everything a hallucination, intuition impossible to know conventionally just called luck, etc is the system trying hard to deny this.

> It makes you wonder what obvious thing is being ignored right now

Not really, 40% of the US believes they were created (or are descendant of) by a divine being (creationism), in spite of all evidence, so pass that hurdle first

> I would not be 100% surprised if people in the future accepted things like 'ghost experiences' as normal things.

Like 20%-66% of the US believes this today? No one is experiencing the reality you are, ever, something to keep in mind, IMO.

Not to mention flat-earthers, climate change deniers, 5G-causes-vaccines activists burning down 4G towers as they have no idea what 5G even is, etc., etc.

It's all too easy for the less skeptical to be misguided. :/

yeah, but way less people believe in those things though, still a huge problem, unfortunately

not many polls on people understanding a difference between ionizing and non-ionizing radiation even, who knows what people know

> No one is experiencing the reality you are.

This is a common sentiment, but it is also a declaration of epistemic bankruptcy, thus incompatible with the scientific method.

No, people don't experience the same reality, but it can still be observed and measured, which was pretty much resolved in the 1700s (Hume, others), so you might want to delve into that first.

I think you might be conflating "experience" and "interpret." If we can all measure reality and come up with the same values, we are experiencing the same one. How we interpret that is another question. Keep in mind the philosophers who came before had great contributions to the big thought-experiment we call existence, but many of them argued from emotionally or socioeconomically tainted positions and nobody has gotten it 100% right yet, or we would not be having this discussion.

Back to the original point of this thread, science doubts until certainty, or as close to certainty as our current capabilities will allow, is achieved. That doubt is what allows it to change with the introduction of new information. This is why the religious hold on to what they do, the paranormal believers cling to what seems like misunderstood phenomenon to the rest of us; they don't doubt, and are thus barred from discovery of the truth.

> or we would not be having this discussion.

Or those who aren't students of philosophy, just never read everything they said, seems more likely, no?

> Keep in mind the philosophers who came before had great contributions to the big thought-experiment we call existence, but many of them argued from emotionally or socioeconomically tainted positions and nobody has gotten it 100% right yet, or we would not be having this discussion.

Okay? What does that mean? We have 300 years of society embracing this perspective of Hume and the (at least) tens of thousands of scholars that followed him. I think it is well established that we believe this, even if you have some special knowledge or something enqueued.

Are you going to debunk all philosophy of the 18th century because they were arguing from an "emotionally or socioeconomically" stance (whatever that means)? It seems like an argument from an extremely weak position rhetorically, and I am being generous.

Your replies indicate that you are not able to have this discussion as you are too steeped in your field of study, which I assume you consider to be objectively correct. I respect the time and effort you've put into it, but Philosophy, though useful at times, is conjecture, not science. It does not have a place in a discussion about the inherent truth of measurable natural phenomenon if one is not able to cast doubt on it. I shall move on.

Yeah, I thought you got schooled, too.

Science is philosophy, though what one might describe as applied philosophy. The point being: science (the scientific method) cannot exist outside the context of some epistemic system.

I saw your 'recommendation' to read about Hume further up the comment chain. Respectfully, I know more than you. Take your own suggestion. But don't just read about Hume; get a broader intro to the subject so you can understand how ontology, epistemology, ethics, and politics tie into one another.

  I saw your 'recommendation' to read about Hume further up the comment chain. Respectfully, I know more than you.

As an exercise in knowledge and observation, who 'recommended' Hume up thread, and to wHume are you replying?

Nice catch. Those passwords-as-usernames got me :)

No drama, gave me a chuckle & I'm glad you took it well; my primary motivation was to alert you in case you wanted to change up your response, etc.

Hume might have enjoyed this past century's Dialetheism of Graham Priest and Richard Sylvan as a solution to paradox arising from strict rationalism, it's more probable Hume would have lacked any passion for it.

To be exact a little under 40% believe in special creation - the mainstream Christian position (and more common even in the US) is that evolution is part of God's creation.

The US is very odd, not only in having large numbers of members of creationist churches, but also in tat a lot of members of churches that oppose creationism and Biblical literalism are quite often creationist.

The good news is that there is a downward trend in creationism.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/210956/belief-creationist-view-...

That's not so odd if you take into account that a lot of US citizens trace their origins back to people that left Europe because their beliefs were conflicting with those of the established churches. And because the established churches did not have a strong presence in the United States (or actually, its predecessor) these suddenly found themselves to be the dominant religion in sometimes much larger regions than they ever could have hoped for back in the home country. And when the population boomed so did their numbers.

It explains how it came about but not entirely why it persisted. It is also interesting that it has influenced the views of members of the established churches in the US.

I am not saying its unexplained, just that I do not understand it personally (I really do not understand the American culture and society at all well).

There are people that believe in flat-earth. Not entirely sure why it persists.

There's a difference of holding firm in one's existing belief/understanding and not just changing the beliefs as the winds change, but only with strong compelling evidence. It's entirely different when that evidence is presented in multiple forms and yet one still chooses to ignore it.

Flat-earthers are very few. You only really see them on social media where rage bait and fake stupidity get engagement.

A close family member does not believe in evolution. No amount of evidence will suffice. People can get closed minded around the weirdest things.

I think that background also helped entrench outspoken religiosity in US culture.

There's also the dynamics of having lots of variants of Christianity competing for attention (perfect for the age of televangelism) versus Europeans losing faith in established churches

Lack of evidence is not the same as contradictory evidence.

Could you point to any literature on evidence that refutes creationism? I'm not saying there isn't any. I'm just admitting my ignorance of it. Please enlighten me.

Falsifiability is pretty important here. What evidence could, in theory, refute creationism?

"Science advances one funeral at a time.”

Max Planck

Which is ironic since Max Planck experienced a staggering amount of change in science that did not require anyone dying, took place over just a few decades here and there, and was extremely fruitful.

Born 1858, died 1947, pretty much everything known about anything changed somewhat in that time period, and he was literally part of a lot of it, and helped convince people and change their minds without them dying.

Almost like the quote is utter bullshit.

Almost like its a colloquial phrase of Plancks writings, that represents how the quantum revolution played out for so many people.

Reminds me. On a Greyhound cross country trip, I got seated next to this pretty, well dressed, middle aged lady, that poor college student me, hardly ever saw on such trips. We start chatting and she tells me she is a Ghost Hunter. I took her at face value due previous experiences with real freaky characters on Greyhound, and was thinking oh great here we go again, thank you Greyhound, going to be stuck for hours next to another very strange kook. That kind of put me off further conversation. Then she starts taking out her papers to read, and says - want to see something weird? Shows me all sorts of stuff about different haunted houses. And I was just blown away by how well organized and detailed everything was. Later on she told me she was a PI doing investigations for real estate companies. But for a while it felt like I was sitting next to Scully reading X-Files.

You're saying real estate companies actually pay people to investigate "haunted" houses?

That's crazy

I don't think so. In my state you get a few days to do a "neighborhood review." If you, as a prospective buyer, walk around to all your potential neighbors and they start telling you about all the ghost stories and freaky stuff that happens in your house at night, you'll probably pull your offer. In aggregate there's money lost. And where there's money lost, there are people trying to fill those gaps.

If people in the "correct" class are having trouble, that means it's not entirely classism. Only the additional trouble the people in the "wrong" class have is because of classism.

> I would not be 100% surprised if people in the future accepted things like 'ghost experiences' as normal things.

Even if the experiences becomes accepted (although i think it unlikely) but not necessarily as really being what people who believe in ghosts think them to be.

it is quite common for things to turn out to be real observations but not to be what the observers thought they were (e.g. flying saucers).

If militaries around the world are not using it, it is probably not real. See also telekinesis or ESP experiments the US Army performed [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stargate_Project_(U.S._Army_un...

Dunno if it's classism so much that if you look at reports of odd waves or lights it's going to be really hard to filter the signal from the noise of people saying odd stuff. Photos are much better.

The problem is they never even tried to look before. Just hand waved that it was impossible and they knew better. Like bees can't fly.

I feel you are undermining the Science!

Just because some common folks think they seen something, it does not mean it exists! It was probanly gas leak explosion, or something!

You have a small typo: repairing instead of reporting

I saw something weird on a red-eye recently that maybe someone can explain:

We were going over a pretty rural area. I saw what looked like the fan of headlights but in these large marbleized shapes like large lightning-crackles. They just sort of moved across the ground and then fizzled out. The movement patterns would be kind of like clouds dissipating but it definitely looked like lights? Very weird.

Something like ball lightning? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_lightning

As Adam Savage famously said (though I'm sure he was far from the first):

  "Remember kids, the only difference between screwing around and science is writing it down."

The quote is a bit of an oversimplification, i.e. "writing it down" isn't all there is to the scientific method, but the core idea something wasn't science until the scientific method was applied is both a tautology and a good thing.

All of this and the only image linked is a collage clocking in at a whopping 512x218px...anyone know where we can see the full resolution? It looks spectacular from the thumbnail!

Yeah, annoying.

This one is better:

https://petapixel.com/assets/uploads/2025/07/Nichole-Ayers-S...

These are cool too, but sprites over himalayas - https://x.com/DarshanRajguru5/status/1940829392269463943

Random Twitter post, is it generated video or anything worth looking at?

Seems to match google image search https://www.google.co.uk/search?num=10&sa=X&sca_esv=8d888c12...

Very impressive video! Such sprites must have been seen at that altitude often enough in history, and as they're quite distinct from lightening I wonder if there is an historical record of them?

that is spectacular .. thx for link.

Imagine, say, Yuri Gagarin seeing this and coming down to explain this in 1961. The ISS is only 50 miles higher than Gagarin's flight.

Thanks, that's a much better photo. You can really see the effects of light pollution well in that one too.

Looks like a scene from a sci-fi movie, where earth is being attacked ;-)

What amazes me more then the jet, is the amount of light pollution from the cities.

Yes, and that influence reaches far outside of the cities themselves. I only realized this after moving to rural Canada where on a clear night you would see the sky in a way that you could never see it within 30 km of any major city. It is hard to describe in words, you'd have to go up North during a cold winter night and lay down and stare upwards.

Yeah - sitting on a porch near Newark, NJ, the sky is a bright hazy dome overhead.

It reminds me of growing up in a big city, too - walking along, looking at the multi-colored clouds above me.

Looks like the PR team didn't care much about the whole thing.

What is that, an image for ants???

I absolutely cannot stand it when a site, especially a government site, doesn't post the original, high resolution, images. However, it seems like it's an archeological expedition to find the high resolution, high quality image.

For those too lazy to go digging:

https://cdn.xcancel.com/pic/orig/7498ED4A7CB57/media%2FGu8ks...

Original tweet: https://xcancel.com/Astro_Ayers/status/1940810789830451563

Thank you!

Thank you, I don't think it's too unreasonable when talking about an amazing image to link to the image in the article to be fair.

Surely X isn't the sole source for this?

Sure, why not? It's the sole source for a lot of things, just like reddit is the sole source for a lot of other things, so why go anywhere else?

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/sep/05/r...

> Sure, why not?

People like me who have never used twitter. It makes no sense to spread this information across platforms.

You don’t have to use twitter (I don’t).

But how would one know to look there for the high resolution image?

A link to an even higher resolution image was posted hours earlier:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44937613

https://petapixel.com/assets/uploads/2025/07/Nichole-Ayers-S...

From lfaw explanation linked below: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44939514

"The phenomenon took place at roughly 29°N 101.5°W over Coahuila, Mexico." That's ~50 miles from the Ciudad Acuña / Del Rio border crossing with Texas.

Also all the social media links are wrong lol. I clicked on the instagram link to "nasascience" expecting to find a higher quality photo and it turned out to be some random Turkish dude with 3 posts and 1 follower.

Took me a bit of time to realise this wasn't about spotting a plane from the ISS... which is apparently possible but difficult:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3243916/Can-...

+1 thought they had caught an image of a Spirit airlines plane...

larger photo, with explanations: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gigantic_jet_photogr...

That title made me think someone snapped a picture of something like a Spirit A320 cruising at max altitude. They are bright yellow and would stand out in a photo.

The image this is about: https://x.com/Astro_Ayers/status/1940810789830451563

https://xcancel.com/Astro_Ayers/status/1940810789830451563 to see replies.

Some discussion in a thread about a topically related article a few weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44480363

I wonder where this thunderstorm was and when!

3 July, near the border between Mexico and Texas: https://xcancel.com/Astro_Ayers/status/1940810789830451563

Previously on HN, same topic and link to Ayers' photo:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44480363

Additional info about TLEs:

https://paulmsmithphotography.com/pages/what-are-red-sprites...

> depositing a significant amount of electrical charge

Unsatisfying description but I guess we don't yet know if it's any close to 1.21 jigawatts.

why is it red?

Best guess, high altitude atomic oxygen.

Based on the wikipedia aurora article it sounds like the lower atmosphere has a more mixed bag of gasses, so it glows white, while in the upper atmosphere atomic oxygen(note that oxygen lower down is all diatomic and glows green) is able to showcase it's characteristic red glow.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora#Colours_and_wavelengths...

But now I am wondering about the green(oxygen?) and yellow(sodium?) atmospheric bands visable. The green one is interesting because it may tear apart my atomic oxygen theory. why would a green diatomic band be above the red atomic sprite flare?

PecosHank on YouTube has a great video on TLEs and how to photograph them from the ground. I think the green is oxygen and the red is nitrogen, same as in the aurora.

NASA astronauts on board Expedition 44...didn't expect flashbacks like that

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