Ticket pic of the week: Better to fly over this thing than into it

What do you think this is?

Hint: It's space-related.

At first glance, we thought it was one of those spectacular gas clouds a million light years from Earth, captured by the amazing eye of Hubble Space Telescope.

Not so.

This is actually a photo looking down from space.

Back at Earth.

Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli, perched in the International Space Station about 120 miles up, took this photo of a colossal lightning storm over Brazil. No wonder they call it the rain forest.

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-- Andrew Malcolm

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Photo: Paolo Nespoli / NASA / ESA