In Focus just published an awesome gallery of lightning strikes that’s definitely worth checking out. Worldwide, lightning strikes around 50 times every second (that’s more than 4 million a day!).

In the photograph above, we see an elusive “red sprite” flash (just above the lightning), photographed by Expedition 31 astronauts aboard the International Space Station on April 30, 2012. The sprite appears high above a lightning strike (bright spot in the clouds). Red sprites only last for a few milliseconds, sending pulses of electrical energy up toward the edge of space–the electrically charged layer known as the ionosphere–instead of down to Earth’s surface. More about this image can be found on NASA’s Earth Observatory.