Nasa has released a stunning photograph of a lightning bolt striking the earth, as seen by astronauts on board the International Space Station (ISS).
The image, taken in December 2013, is part of the launch of a new instrument aboard the ISS called Firestation, which is focused on tracking lightning strikes across the planet and shows dark, heavy clouds over the Arabian peninsula with a white/purple glow indicating where the lightning struck.
Whilst lightning strikes are very common across the globe, with about 50 strikes per second, but strikes which emit gamma-rays, like the one captured in the photo, are much more rare. Terrestrial gamma-ray flashes (TGFs) like this create anti-matter in the atmosphere for a fraction of a second, and are the main focus of the Nasa investigations.