When a thunderstorm recently lit up the night sky, cameras captured towering red shapes that looked uncannily like glowing jellyfish hanging above the clouds. The images raced across social media, and within hours speculation about alien signals and secret weapons was competing with genuine scientific curiosity. What NASA has now explained is far stranger, and far more revealing about our own planet, than any extraterrestrial visitor.
The “red jellyfish” are part of a family of elusive electrical flashes that erupt high above storms, invisible to most of us on the ground but dramatic when caught on camera. By unpacking what these events are, how they form, and why they keep getting mistaken for alien activity, I can show how a once-mythical phenomenon has become a cutting-edge research target for space agencies, pilots and citizen scientists alike.
From viral ‘alien’ clip to NASA clarification
The latest wave of fascination began with a storm that produced a cluster of red, tentacled flashes, captured in a video that quickly went viral and was framed as possible proof of extraterrestrial contact. Viewers saw a crimson crown with filament-like tendrils and, lacking context, many jumped to the idea of an encoded signal pulsing above Earth. That leap was helped along by breathless captions that described the shapes as a mysterious “Dec Alien” pattern hovering over the planet, language that primed audiences to see intention rather than physics at work.
NASA’s response was deliberately sober, identifying the spectacle as a form of upper-atmosphere lightning known as sprites and stressing that the red “jellyfish lights” are a natural consequence of powerful storms, not messages from space. In its explanation, the agency noted that these flashes often appear as ghostly, ethereal structures that can resemble a jellyfish or a crown, which helps explain why the latest images triggered such a strong reaction before scientists weighed in on the alien signal or atmospheric mystery debate.
What sprites actually are in the atmosphere
To understand why NASA was so confident, it helps to start with the basic physics of sprites. Sprites, sometimes called red sprites, are large-scale electric discharges that occur in the mesosphere, high above thunderstorm clouds, rather than inside the storm itself. They form when an intense lightning strike between the underlying thundercloud and the ground suddenly alters the electric field above the storm, triggering a brief, diffuse flash that can stretch tens of kilometers upward in a fraction of a second, a behavior that has been carefully cataloged in scientific descriptions of Sprites.
Because they erupt in the rarefied air of the upper atmosphere, sprites glow red rather than the bluish-white of conventional lightning, and their shapes can vary from simple columns to elaborate, branching forms that look like carrots, trees or jellyfish. The “jellyfish” subtype is especially striking, with a bright central region and downward-reaching tendrils that give the impression of a living creature suspended above the storm. That combination of scale, color and fleeting visibility makes them perfect candidates for misinterpretation when they are caught by a lucky observer who has never heard the term sprite before.
NASA’s ‘red jellyfish lights’ verdict
When NASA formally addressed the viral footage, the agency did more than just slap a label on the phenomenon. It confirmed that the red “jellyfish lights” are natural red sprites, a rare class of upper-atmosphere lightning flashes that appear above Earth’s storms rather than within the thunderclouds themselves. By tying the event to this well-documented category, NASA effectively debunked the idea that the shapes represented a new or unknown force, emphasizing instead that they fit neatly into decades of research on high-altitude electrical discharges and that They are part of a known pattern above Earth’s storms.
That verdict matters because it shows how quickly a familiar scientific phenomenon can be recast as an unexplained mystery when it is detached from context. NASA’s clarification underscored that the same storm systems that produce ordinary lightning bolts can also generate these towering red structures, provided the electrical conditions are right. By linking the viral images back to established sprite science, the agency not only calmed the alien speculation but also used the moment to highlight how much of Earth’s own electrical environment remains invisible to casual observers, even as it is mapped in detail by satellites and high-speed cameras.
Why people keep seeing aliens in red sprites
The persistence of alien rumors around these events says as much about human psychology as it does about the sky. When people see a vivid, unfamiliar pattern in nature, especially one that appears suddenly and vanishes in an instant, they tend to reach for narratives that involve intention, communication or control. In the case of the red jellyfish-like flashes, the combination of a deep crimson glow, tentacle-like filaments and a position above the storm made it easy for some viewers to imagine a structured signal, and to describe the shapes as if “Dec” and “Alien” were encoded in the sky over Earth.
Some coverage leaned into that framing, asking whether the mysterious red jellyfish in the sky might be aliens communicating with Earthlings, before ultimately acknowledging that the flashes are a natural phenomenon in Earth’s upper atmosphere. That arc, from speculation to explanation, mirrors the way earlier generations treated ball lightning or auroras, and it is reflected in reports that initially framed the lights as a potential message before clarifying that they are part of the electrical system in the human body of the planet, so to speak, a metaphor that appeared in discussions of whether aliens communicating with Earthlings was ever a plausible reading.
Sprites as part of a larger family of sky flashes
Sprites do not exist in isolation, and NASA’s explanation placed them within a broader family of high-altitude electrical events that scientists group under the label Transient Luminous Events. These TLEs, sometimes called upper atmospheric lightning or ionospheric lightning, include sprites, blue jets, elves and other exotic-sounding forms that all share one trait: they are short-lived flashes that occur above thunderstorms rather than inside them. In technical descriptions, sprites are defined as brief, red discharges triggered by powerful positive cloud-to-ground lightning strokes, often referred to as positive giants, which set up the conditions for these Transient Luminous Events.
For pilots and aviation safety experts, understanding TLEs is more than a curiosity, because these flashes can appear in the airspace where high-altitude aircraft operate. While sprites themselves are weak compared with the lightning inside storms, their presence signals intense electrical activity below, which can be relevant for flight routing and for understanding how thunderstorms interact with the upper atmosphere. By situating the red jellyfish lights within this larger framework, NASA and other researchers are effectively saying that what looks like a singular mystery is actually one expression of a complex, layered electrical system that stretches from the ground to the edge of space.
How astronauts see red sprites from orbit
One reason scientists are so confident in their interpretation is that sprites have been photographed and studied from multiple vantage points, including from orbit. Earlier this year, Nichole Ayers, an American astronaut aboard the International Space Station, captured a striking image of a red sprite as a storm raged far below. From her perch on the ISS, she saw a bright, branching flare erupt above the cloud tops, a perspective that made the structure and scale of the event unmistakable and added to a growing archive of Nichole Ayers documenting these flares.
As the space station drifted over Mexico and the US, Nichole Ayers explained that sprites are rare atmospheric phenomena that appear above powerful thunderstorms, and she used her post to describe how they reveal processes unfolding deep within the storms themselves. Her vantage point allowed her to see the full vertical extent of the sprite, from the top of the thundercloud to the upper atmosphere, reinforcing the idea that these are not isolated blips but part of a continuous electrical circuit. That kind of first-hand account from a NASA astronaut has helped move sprites from the realm of rumor into the mainstream, as more people see them as a documented feature of the planet rather than a glitch in a camera sensor, a point underscored when As the station crossed over North America.
Why sprites look like jellyfish from the ground
From the surface, though, the view is very different, and that is where the jellyfish analogy comes from. Sprites are a weak but amazing phenomenon that happens right above an active thunderstorm, and when they are captured in long-exposure photographs, the bright upper region and trailing filaments can look uncannily like the bell and tentacles of the sea creature they are compared to. In some images, the main body of the sprite appears as a glowing red dome, while the tendrils seem to dangle into the darkness, a configuration that has been highlighted in explanations of why Sprites are so often likened to jellyfish.
Unlike traditional lightning, which crackles within the troposphere and can be heard as thunder, these mysterious flashes are silent to observers on the ground and occur so high that they can be missed entirely without specialized cameras. Atmospheric scientists who have studied them point out that the human eye is not well suited to catching such brief, faint events, which is why many people go their entire lives without knowingly seeing a sprite even if they live in storm-prone regions. When a particularly vivid example is finally captured and shared, the unfamiliar shape and color can feel otherworldly, especially when the image is stripped of context and presented as a standalone mystery.
Citizen science and NASA’s hunt for more sprites
Far from treating the viral jellyfish footage as a nuisance, NASA has been actively encouraging the public to help document more of these events. Through its Spritacular project, the agency invites citizen scientists to submit photographs and videos of sprites and related phenomena, turning smartphones and backyard cameras into a distributed observing network. The goal is to collect enough high-quality imagery to map when and where sprites occur, how they vary from storm to storm, and how they relate to other forms of upper-atmosphere activity, a mission that is laid out in detail on the Spritacular citizen science page.
For participants, the appeal is obvious: the chance to contribute to real research while capturing some of the most dramatic natural light shows on Earth. For scientists, the payoff is a richer dataset than any single satellite or observatory could provide, especially in regions where formal monitoring is sparse. By folding the public into the hunt for sprites, NASA is effectively turning each viral “mystery” clip into a potential data point, reframing the conversation from “Is this aliens?” to “What can this tell us about the electrical heartbeat of our atmosphere?” That shift may be the most important legacy of the red jellyfish buzz, because it channels curiosity into observation rather than speculation.
What the ‘red jellyfish’ teach us about storms and ourselves
In the end, the story of the red jellyfish lights is not about debunking a single rumor, but about how science and storytelling collide whenever something spectacular appears in the sky. Sprites remind us that even familiar thunderstorms have layers of complexity that extend far above the clouds, into regions that only satellites, space stations and specialized cameras can routinely see. They also show how quickly a lack of context can turn a well-understood phenomenon into a canvas for fears and fantasies, especially when the imagery is striking and the language around it leans toward mystery.
NASA’s explanation, backed by years of research and a growing archive of observations from the ground and from orbit, offers a different kind of wonder. Instead of aliens sending signals, the red jellyfish are Earth itself, discharging energy in a delicate, transient dance that links the weather we feel to the edge of space. By paying attention to those fleeting flashes, and by inviting the public to help capture them, scientists are not draining the magic from the sky. They are revealing that the true story, written in electric reds and branching filaments, is more intricate and more beautiful than the rumors that first drew our eyes upward.
More from MorningOverview