NASA Unravels Mystery About Earth's Flashes of Light Observed from Space

Have you ever heard about this talk of flashes of light emitted by our planet from space? They were first identified in 1993 in images captured by the NASA-launched Galileo space probe. However, no one gave much attention to the curious bright spots and they were eventually forgotten - until they were registered again in 2015 by the DSCOVR (Deep Space Climate Observatory) satellite.

According to Michael Franco of the New Atlas website, this equipment is in orbit about 1.5 million kilometers from Earth. He has a mission to observe our planet and monitor sun activity and solar storms - and clicks an image of our world every hour. For in some of these records such flashes were again noticed, as was the case below:

(NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center)

Mystery

Over a year or so, the satellite camera - EPIC (Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera) - has captured hundreds of these flashes across the planet, but only now have NASA people figured out how they are produced.

First, scientists realized that the glow only came when the camera was "aimed" at the Earth at the same angle that the sun was facing our planet. Therefore, the researchers deduced that flashes could only be reflections - instead of being emitted from sources originating in our world, such as lightning, for example.

NASA personnel even suspected it could be the lakes - or other surface water concentrations - that were causing the reflections, but found that the flashes were produced at high altitudes, usually near cirrus clouds that form. about 10, 000 meters from the surface. As such, the culprit for the mysterious sparkles could only be horizontally oriented ice particles.

It may sound silly, but think that this curious mystery of flashes took more than 20 years to solve. Moreover, according to NASA, the discovery was not in vain, as it may aid in observing and understanding similar phenomena on other planets, as well as helping astronomers determine the composition of their atmospheres and even identify potentially habitable worlds.

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