In the space of a few milliseconds, a huge сгіmѕoп halo of light Ьɩаzed in the night sky over Italy. A neighboring transmitter’s electromagnetic pulse most likely саᴜѕed it to exрɩode.
A halo of red light briefly appeared in the night sky above Italy on March 27. (Image credit: Valter Binotto)
An enormous, circular halo of eerie red light, which looks like something straight out of a sci-fi movie, recently flashed in the night sky above Italy. The bizarre disk appeared and disappeared within milliseconds, meaning most people likely missed the strange spectacle.
But one person, nature photographer Valter Binotto (opens in new tab), managed to capture a shot of the luminous halo in the sky above the town of Possagno in northern Italy on March 27. However, the red ring was not actually located above the town. Instead, the massive circle, which was around 224 miles (360 kilometers) in diameter, blinked above central Italy and part of the Adriatic Sea. It was only a forced perspective that made the ring look as if it were hanging above the town.
The ring flash is known as an “emission of light and very low-frequency perturbations due to electromagnetic pulse sources,” or ELVE for short, according to Spaceweather.com (opens in new tab). ELVEs are a rare type of stratospheric/mesospheric perturbations resulting from intense thunderstorm electrification (SPRITE). The red rings are created when electromagnetic pulses (EMPs) given off by lightning hit Earth’s ionosphere, the ionized part of the upper atmosphere that stretches between 50 and 400 miles (80 and 644 km) above the ground.
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