A rare and extraordinary atmospheric phenomenon has been documented above the Himalayas, where over 100 red sprite lightning ...

Red sprites hover between 40 and 55 miles high. Up there, the air is thin, so electric fields can spark gigantic filaments ...

From the ISS, scientists are capturing rare lightning above storms that could impact radio, climate, and safety.

More information: Hailiang Huang et al, Massive Outbreak of Red Sprites in South Asia Observed from the Tibetan Plateau, Advances in Atmospheric Sciences (2025). DOI: 10.1007/s00376-024-4143-5 ...

Red sprites occur far above these thunderstorms, specifically in the mesosphere, and are a form of lightning that rather than going toward the ground, shoot up into the atmosphere.

Elves and sprites are a form of atmospheric lightning, also known as transient luminous events. What are ‘Elves’? No, they are not the elves that work up at Santa’s workshop.

Sprites and ghosts occur in the mesosphere, the layer of Earth’s atmosphere that sits above the stratosphere and extends from about 31 to 53 miles (50 to 85 kilometers) above the ground.

Red sprites have been thought to have caused the crash of a weather balloon in 1989, which fell from a height of 120,000 feet after it passed over a thundercloud, crash-landing near Graham, Texas.

Sprites themselves, although very brief, are much easier to see—and to study—than the green ghosts that accompany about one in every 100 of the red displays, says María Passas Varo, a space ...

Although they’re associated with thunderstorms, sprites don’t occur in the same clouds that produce rain in the lower part of the atmosphere. Instead, the sprites appear up to 50 miles (80 ...