Stunning View of Lyrids and Earth at Night

On April 21, the 2012 Lyrid meteor shower peaked in the skies over Earth. While NASA allsky cameras were looking up, astronaut Don Pettit aboard the International Space Station trained his video camera on Earth below. Video footage has revealed breathtaking images of meteors ablating -- or burning up -- over Earth at night. This video is a composite of 310 still frames from that evening. (NASA/JSC/Don Pettit)

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  Science & Technology

[scjurgen]

It's about the red streak at the bottom of the video at 0:07-0:10, not about the lights and flashes...

[MsJoanie13]

glad im not the only one who thought this was lightning

[dstdvl]

This is incorrect. The correct explanation is given below by NeutralSpin.

[AliceJasperfan]

Thus proving why Aliens don't attack us, we look like we are on fire and just killing each other (even thou it's true) I can't imagine what the earth looks like on new years, Alien's must have come by on that night and saw all of explosions and just said "you know what...no...not worth it.." and left. On the bright side our planet is stuff of legend in other systems because of rouge space travelers. GO PLANET EARTH!!!

[nc17atnce101]

if we were on another planet this particular one called earth would seem inhabitable

[therealkorogyi]

i can't believe that all you people think you are smarter than NASA...

[アンディ テラス]

They are not meteors, they are lightning in the atmosphere. The reason they appear rapidly is because it is time lapsed.

[Keith Johnson]

I can't believe those are meteors. They are too large and too localized, rather than moving in straight lines (though that could be an artifact of time compression, I suppose). I don't think meteors cluster like that, with big regions empty of meteors. But lightning appears in groups in storms, and that's what this looks like to me.

[Gabriela Aponte]

Its beautiful <3



[Tommyr]

I only see lightning. Those flashes are lightening.