You’re looking at a massive thunderstorm from a plane window or maybe a high-altitude ridge. The bolts hit the ground, illuminating the clouds from within. Standard stuff. But then, for a fraction of a second—faster than a literal blink—a towering red jellyfish-shaped ghost flickers fifty miles above the clouds. It’s huge. We're talking thirty miles wide. Then it’s gone. If you saw it in the 1980s, you probably didn't tell anyone because you didn't want to lose your pilot’s license.
For decades, these things were basically the "Bigfoot" of meteorology. Pilots saw them, whispered about them, but nobody had proof. Then, in 1989, researchers at the University of Minnesota caught one on camera by total accident while testing a low-light TV camera. That changed everything. These are lightning sprites and elves, and they are part of a family of "Transient Luminous Events" (TLEs) that happen so high in the atmosphere they’re practically in space.
What's actually happening up there?
A sprite isn't just "high-altitude lightning." That’s a common misconception. Regular lightning is a plasma discharge between clouds or the ground. A sprite is a cold plasma phenomenon. Think of it more like a giant, fleeting neon light bulb. When a particularly powerful bolt of positive lightning hits the ground, it leaves a massive imbalance of charge in the clouds. To compensate, the mesosphere—that thin, cold layer of air 50 to 90 kilometers up—basically "breaks down." The electricity surges upward, ionizing the nitrogen in the air. That nitrogen glows a deep, eerie red.
It’s fast. Really fast. Most sprites last between 3 and 10 milliseconds.
🔗 Read more: U.S. Race Breakdown: What the Numbers Actually Tell Us About America Today
Then you have the "Elves." They aren't little mythical creatures. The name is actually a clunky backronym for Emissions of Light and Very Low Frequency Perturbations from Electromagnetic Pulse Sources. Scientists love their acronyms. Unlike the vertical, jellyfish-like sprites, Elves are expanding rings of light. They look like a glowing red donut that can grow to 300 miles wide in an instant. They happen even higher up, in the ionosphere, triggered by the electromagnetic pulse (EMP) of a massive lightning strike. If you were standing on the moon with a telescope, you’d see these flickering halos crowning the Earth’s storms like ghostly tiaras.
The Weird Varieties
Not all sprites look the same. You've got "Carrot Sprites," which have long, tapering "tendrils" hanging down toward the clouds. Then there are "Column Sprites," which are just vertical pillars of light. Some observers have even seen "Green Ghosts," which are tiny, greenish glows that sometimes appear at the very top of a sprite. This was only recently documented in 2019 by storm chaser Paul Smith. It’s likely caused by oxygen atoms getting excited, similar to how the Aurora Borealis works, but we're still figuring out the exact chemistry.
Why NASA and the ISS are obsessed with them
It isn't just about pretty lights. These events are a bridge between our weather and the edge of space. For a long time, we thought the troposphere (where we live) and the ionosphere (where satellites live) were separate. Lightning sprites and elves prove they are intimately connected.
Astronauts on the International Space Station spend a lot of time trying to photograph these from above. ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen actually captured some of the clearest footage ever during his "Thor" experiment. Looking down from the ISS gives a perspective we can't get from Earth because the thick atmosphere and the clouds themselves usually block the view.
There's a real concern about how these events affect the chemistry of the upper atmosphere. They dump a lot of energy into the mesosphere. Does this change ozone levels? Does it affect how radio waves travel? We know that Elves can disturb the ionosphere, which is exactly where GPS and communication signals bounce around. If a massive storm system is popping off hundreds of Elves an hour, it might be creating "potholes" in the sky for our data.
The struggle to see them
Honestly, catching a sprite is a nightmare. You need a perfect storm, literally.
- You have to be about 100 to 200 miles away from a powerful convective system.
- The sky above the storm has to be clear, even if the storm itself is a mess.
- You need a high-speed camera or a very sensitive low-light sensor.
- You have to look above the lightning, not at it.
Most people fail because they blink. Or they're looking at the ground strikes. If you want to see one, you have to train your eyes to watch the black space above the thunderheads. It’s a game of patience that feels more like hunting for UFOs than doing meteorology.
Debunking the "Secret Weapon" Myths
Whenever people see footage of Elves on TikTok or YouTube, the conspiracy theorists come out of the woodwork. They call them "HAARP" experiments or "space-based lasers." It's total nonsense.
These phenomena have been happening since Earth had an atmosphere. We just didn't have the tech to see them. In the 1950s, C.T.R. Wilson—a Nobel Prize-winning physicist—actually predicted that these discharges should exist based on pure physics. He was right, but he died long before the "accidental" 1989 discovery proved it. There's nothing artificial about them. They are just the atmosphere's way of balancing an incredibly violent electrical budget.
It's also worth noting that sprites are "cold." If you could somehow stand inside one, you wouldn't get fried like you would by a lightning bolt. The air density is so low up there that while the "temperature" of the electrons is high, the actual thermal energy is tiny. It’s a glow, not a fire.
The Future of Sprite Hunting
We are currently in a golden age of TLE research. In 2026, we have more citizen scientists than ever before using high-end Sony and Canon mirrorless cameras that can see in near-darkness. This "crowdsourced science" is actually helping NASA map where these events happen most frequently.
The Great Plains in the United States is a hotspot. So is the Congo Basin in Africa and parts of South America. Basically, anywhere you get "Mesoscale Convective Systems"—those giant, long-lived blobs of thunderstorms—you're going to find sprites.
📖 Related: Jefferson County Shooting Reports: Why These Cases Are So Hard To Close
How to see one yourself
If you're serious about this, don't just go outside during a rainstorm. You won't see anything but clouds. You need to find a location where you can see a storm on the horizon from a distance. Use a radar app like RadarScope to find a "Positive Cloud-to-Ground" (+CG) strike. Those are the big ones that carry a massive positive charge. Those are the "trigger" bolts.
- Set up a camera on a tripod.
- Use a wide-angle lens with a low f-stop (f/1.8 or f/2.8).
- Set your ISO high—at least 3200.
- Run continuous 2-to-5 second exposures.
- Point the camera at the dark sky above the distant flashes.
You'll likely catch a lot of nothing. But when you finally see that red flicker on your playback screen, it’s a rush. You’re looking at something that, for most of human history, was considered a hallucination or a myth.
Summary of Actionable Insights
If you are a photographer or a weather enthusiast looking to document lightning sprites and elves, start by monitoring the National Lightning Detection Network (NLDN) for storms with high rates of positive ground strikes. Focus your efforts during the summer months when "supercell" storms are most active, particularly in the midwestern United States. Ensure you have a clear line of sight to the horizon, far away from city light pollution.
For those interested in the science, follow the "Spritacular" project, a NASA-funded citizen science initiative where you can upload your photos to help professional researchers categorize these events. Studying these isn't just a hobby; it’s helping us understand the global electric circuit that keeps our planet’s atmosphere in balance. The more we document these "ghosts" of the sky, the less mysterious our upper atmosphere becomes.
💡 You might also like: Lexington County Jail Inmate Lookup: How to Find Someone Today
Next Steps for Sprite Enthusiasts:
- Check your local "Dark Sky" map to find a viewing location with zero light pollution toward the horizon.
- Download a satellite tracking app to see if the ISS is passing over a nearby storm system; NASA often releases simultaneous data from these passes.
- Invest in a "trigger" device for your camera that detects infrared or fast light changes, though manual long exposures are often more reliable for TLEs.