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Rare Red 'Elve' Halo Rings the Sky Above the Italian Alps — Photographer Captures Moment

05:24 AM, 11/26/2025
Rare Red 'Elve' Halo Rings the Sky Above the Italian Alps — Photographer Captures Moment

Valter Binotto photographed a rare red elve above Possagno, Italy, on Nov. 17. Elves are millisecond, disk‑shaped flashes in the ionosphere caused by powerful electromagnetic pulses from strong lightning strikes. This event was linked to a negative lightning bolt near Vernazza that measured about -303 kA, producing an EMP that lit the ionosphere roughly 100 miles (160 km) above Earth. The image is a frame from a 25 fps video taken with a Sony A7S (20 mm f/1.8, ISO 51,200).

For a fleeting moment on Nov. 17, the night sky over northern Italy erupted in a vast, glowing red ring that an amateur photographer captured from his home in Possagno. Valter Binotto framed the brief phenomenon above the foothills of the Italian Alps and recorded a rare upper‑atmosphere lightning event known as an "elve."

Elves are extremely fast, disk‑shaped flashes that expand across hundreds of miles and last for less than a millisecond. According to NOAA, they form high in the ionosphere when a strong electromagnetic pulse (EMP) from a powerful lightning strike propagates upward and excites that ionized layer of the atmosphere (the same region where auroras occur).

Binotto had been aiming to photograph sprites, another kind of transient upper‑atmosphere discharge, and was focusing on a storm with relatively clear skies. "I didn't capture any sprites, but fortunately I managed to capture this elve!" he said. He recorded the event with a Sony A7S and a 20 mm f/1.8 lens at ISO 51,200; the published image is a single frame extracted from video shot at 25 frames per second.

Observers and monitoring sites reported the elve was triggered by an exceptionally powerful negative lightning strike in a storm near Vernazza, roughly 300 km south of Binotto's location. One bolt in that storm registered about -303 kiloamperes (the negative sign denotes polarity), producing an intense EMP that briefly lit the ionosphere. For comparison, typical cloud‑to‑ground lightning carries roughly 10–30 kiloamperes of current.

Estimates place the elve at about 100 miles (160 km) altitude and spanning roughly 200 miles (320 km) across. Binotto previously photographed a dramatic elve on March 23, 2023, from the same town, demonstrating how these red halos can appear with striking structure when captured at the right moment.

Why this matters

Elves are exceptionally brief and often invisible to the naked eye, which makes them both scientifically interesting and difficult to observe. High‑speed cameras, precise timing and a bit of luck are usually required to record them. Images like Binotto's help researchers and the public better understand how thunderstorms couple to Earth's upper atmosphere.

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