In 1989, while experimenting with low-light video cameras for use in high-altitude rockets, University of Minnesota scientists Robert Nemzek, John Winckler, and Robert Franz accidentally captured images of sprites. This quickly piqued the interest of NASA scientists at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, who managed to record more examples of sprites. Later successes of taking pictures or video of sprites came from Walter Lyons, who filmed over 240 sprites on July 7, 1993, and Davis Sentman and Eugene Wescott of the University of Alaska, who used a NASA aircraft to film sprites that same month.