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There Is Some Mighty Weird Stuff Going On Up There
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The technical term for them is Transient Luminous Events, and it’s a good term. Transient, because they last just a few milliseconds. Luminous, because they light up the sky, but also because they invoke the radiant immanence of an old-testament manifestation. Events because—well, imagine you saw this. You would agree this was an Event.
The most commonly observed TLE is a red sprite, an enormous electrical discharge shooting upward from thunderstorm clouds, usually a blood-red color due the excitation of nitrogen atoms. Below is one of the finest images of sprites ever recorded, by nature photographer Florian Riou last month:
