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On the night of November 26, 2025, something truly rare occurred over northern Italy. Photographer Valter Binotto from the town of Possagno at the foot of the Alps managed to capture in a single frame two of the most elusive atmospheric phenomena: an elf and a sprite. This marked the first documented case of simultaneous flashes of two different types of Transient Luminous Events, or TLEs, which are upper-atmospheric electrical discharges.
What elves and sprites are
Ordinary lightning strikes downward, either between clouds or toward the ground. TLEs, by contrast, occur high above thunderstorms in the thin air near the edge of space. Elves are enormous, ghostly red rings that can reach up to 480 kilometers in diameter and last less than a thousandth of a second. They form when a powerful lightning strike sends an electromagnetic pulse into the ionosphere, briefly causing nitrogen molecules to glow red.
Sprites resemble red jellyfish or branching tendrils rising above a storm. They are the most commonly observed type of TLE, yet they remain extremely rare due to their millisecond duration and unpredictability. Projects such as Spritacular collect photographs from sprite hunters around the world to study how thunderstorms interact with the upper atmosphere.
Capturing even one of these phenomena is considered a stroke of luck. Capturing both at the same time is almost unheard of.
Binotto explained to Space.com that this was one of the most astonishing and exciting photographs he had ever taken. He noted that elves are already very rare, and a double event is even more so, adding that he did not believe comparable images currently exist.
How the seemingly impossible was captured
Binotto used a Sony A7S camera with a 50 mm f/1.4 lens. The photograph was extracted as a frame from video recorded at 25 frames per second. This was the third elf he had captured from his home in Possagno, but recording one together with a sprite represented a completely new level of achievement.
In brief
On November 26, 2025, over Italy, Valter Binotto captured the first known simultaneous image of an elf, a gigantic red ring, and a sprite, a red jellyfish-like structure, two of the rarest upper-atmospheric electrical discharges above a thunderstorm. The event represents a unique moment in the history of TLE observations. Such phenomena last only milliseconds and are almost impossible to catch, making this an extraordinary success for both science and photography.
