Gigantic Jets Over Oklahoma.

Have you ever seen a gigantic jet?

They are extremely rare but tremendously powerful.

Gigantic jets are a newly discovered type of lightning discharge between some thunderstorms and the Earth's ionosphere high above them.

Pictured above is one such jet caught by accident by a meteor camera in Oklahoma, USA.

The gigantic jet, at the lower left, traversed perhaps 70 kilometers in just under one second.

Clicking on the image will bring up a movie in many browsers, also visible here.

Gigantic jets are much different from regular cloud-to-cloud and cloud-to-ground lightning.

The bottoms of gigantic jets appear similar in appearance to another type cloud-to-ionosphere strike called blue jets, while the tops appear similar to upper-atmosphere red sprites.

Although the mechanism and trigger that causes gigantic jets is a topic of research, it is clear that the jets reduce charge imbalance between different parts of Earth's atmosphere.

A good way to look for gigantic jets is to watch a powerful but distant thunderstorm from a clear location.