Kathrine Frich
A burst of crimson light streaked across the night sky above New Zealand, a rare atmospheric event known as “red sprites.”
Three photographers captured the spectacle entirely by chance, creating one of the few known images of the Milky Way and this elusive form of lightning in the same frame.
A lucky night under the stars
New Zealander Tom Rae and Spanish photographers Dan Zafra and José Cantabrana had set out on October 11 to photograph the Milky Way over the Omarama Clay Cliffs in southern New Zealand.
What they didn’t expect was to witness one of nature’s most fleeting displays.
Rae told The Guardian that what began as a routine astrophotography session turned “unforgettable” when Cantabrana noticed a thunderstorm on the distant horizon.
Checking their camera files later, the trio realized they had captured several brilliant flashes of “red lightning.”
A phenomenon above the storm
“Red sprites” are bursts of electrical discharge that appear high above thunderclouds, shooting upward into the upper atmosphere instead of striking the ground.
They form at altitudes of 50 to 90 kilometers and are shaped like columns, carrots, or jellyfish glowing in shades of red and pink.
The first image of a sprite was taken accidentally in 1989 by scientists at the University of Minnesota.
Because they last only a thousandth of a second, they are rarely seen with the naked eye.
“I happened to be looking directly at one when it happened,” Rae said. “A perfect coincidence, I was looking in the right part of the sky and saw a brief red light.”
An unforgettable cosmic display
For Zafra, the sight was unlike anything he had ever seen.
“I could see the Milky Way shining above the horizon while these enormous red beams of light danced above a storm hundreds of kilometers away,” he said.
According to the photographers, their shot may be the only known image combining red sprites and the Milky Way in the southern hemisphere — a rare alignment of timing, weather, and sheer luck.
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This article is made and published by Kathrine Frich, which may have used AI in the preparation
