Disney films open with a medieval castle and a lavish fireworks display above it. The opening sequence, symbolic of Disney, appeared in real life. On the 9th (local time), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) released an image of a massive fireworks-like display unfolding in the sky above Château de Beynac in France.
This massive fireworks-like display over a medieval castle was staged not by people but by nature. It was a sprite, in which red lightning pours down from the sky. NASA released the photo of that moment as the December image for its science calendar. It is a perfect photo for December, when Christmas falls.
◇Red lightning pouring over a castle
After a flash of lightning in the sky, something else appears. High above a thunderstorm, a crimson form flickers into view and vanishes. If you saw such a sight in the sky, consider yourself lucky to have witnessed a sprite, a very rare electrical phenomenon in Earth's upper atmosphere.
A sprite is lightning that occurs in the mesosphere. The mesosphere is one of Earth's atmospheric layers, spanning 50–80 km in altitude between the stratosphere and the thermosphere. Ordinary lightning occurs in thunderstorms a few kilometers above the ground, but sprites occur much higher, at around 80 km. Right after lightning strikes, red flashes appear in various shapes, followed by pillars and branches that seem to pour down from the sky.
Lightning is the movement of electric current through the atmosphere. Air is an insulator that does not conduct electricity. But when charge builds up in a cloud, current can travel even through pathless air. Charge refers to the amount of electricity an object holds. If there are more electrons than protons with the elementary charge, it is a negative (−) charge; if fewer electrons, it is a positive (+) charge.
When charge accumulates in clouds, the voltage rises, like a dam filled with water increasing pressure, and current flows in an extremely brief instant. Ordinary lightning travels from clouds in the troposphere, which extends up to an altitude of 11 km, to the ground. However, above the clouds there are other kinds of lightning. Sprites are representative. Sprites appear to dance above thunderstorms, turning on and off in succession.
◇Mega lightning that occurs above the clouds
Sprites are a type of upper-atmospheric lightning called transient luminous events (TLE). The concept of TLE was first proposed in 1989. Unlike ordinary lightning, these powerful discharges occur above thunderclouds and are also called "mega lightning."
TLEs have a variety of names befitting their fantastical appearance. Among mega lightning, sprites descend from the ionosphere at an altitude of 90 km down to as low as 15 km, while, conversely, "blue jets" rise from the tops of thunderclouds up into the ionosphere about 70 km above the ground.
Above that, there are "elves," which appear horizontally in the thermosphere at around 100 km in altitude in a giant donut shape about 400 km across. There are also hybrids that combine two kinds of mega lightning. The "gigantic jet" has a red sprite above and a blue blue jet below, and it can reach up to 90 km in altitude.
Beynac, where the sprites were photographed, is considered the most beautiful village in the Dordogne region of southwestern France. A 12th-century castle stands on a cliff rising beside the Dordogne River, and climbing the steep stone alleys lined with stone dwellings gives the feeling of stepping back into the Middle Ages.
Right after a sprite occurs, a green halo sometimes appears at the top like a ghost. This is the "mesospheric ghost." The Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía in Spain said in 2023 that the flickering green ghost at the top of sprite lightning is created by iron particles arriving from space. It is as if ghosts from space are dancing in the sky over a medieval village.
References
NASA (2025), https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/sprites-over-chateau-de-beynac/
Nature Communications (2023). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-42892-1