The wind was ferocious — gusts over 50kmh — so I took refuge in the lee of my house, clutching the tripod as though it were a lifeline.
The aurora itself was faint, more a gentle shimmer than a performance and I began to think the night might be a quiet one.
Lightning was flickering on the horizon, illuminating the clouds in brief, theatrical bursts while I stood there, facing the aurora’s calm southern glow.
On a whim — the kind that often leads to either disaster or discovery — I swung the camera towards the storm and set it to time-lapse.
Later, when I checked the frames, I nearly spilt my coffee. There, in one image, was something extraordinary: a red, branching figure stretching above the storm like some celestial sea creature.
I’d captured a sprite — one of nature’s rarest and most fleeting electrical phenomena.
Sprites are not your ordinary lightning. They flicker high above thunderstorms, up in the mesosphere, around 80km above Earth. They’re vast, delicate tendrils of plasma triggered by powerful lightning strikes below — more ghost than bolt, lasting barely a few thousandths of a second.
First photographed in 1989, sprites are so brief and ethereal that even most seasoned skywatchers never see them. They dance where the air is too thin to breathe, too high for clouds, and too low for space.
Standing in the wind early on Sunday morning, I didn’t know I was witnessing something so otherworldly. I was just another fool with a camera, hoping the tripod would stay upright. The universe, it seems, occasionally rewards foolish persistence.
If anyone finds my camera, by the way, it was last seen blowing in the wind somewhere between Middlemarch and Outram.
