25/06/2026
SPRITES !!!
Most people never realize that some of the most spectacular forms of lightning on Earth occur high above thunderstorms, invisible to nearly everyone watching from below.
The following photographs capture visible sprites, a rare form of upper-atmospheric lightning that occurs high above powerful thunderstorms rather than within the storm itself.
Unlike the familiar cloud-to-ground or cloud-to-cloud lightning that can be seen from just a few miles away, sprites are extremely brief, faint flashes of light that occur 40 to 60 miles above the Earth. They are often photographed from well over 100 miles away, making them one of the most challenging atmospheric phenomena to capture.
These visible sprite images were captured with a Sony A7R IV camera and a Sigma 85mm F1.4 DG DN | Art lens at f/1.4, ISO 320, with a 3.2-second exposure. The photographs were taken between 10:39 p.m. and 11:35 p.m. Arizona Mountain Standard Time (MST, UTC-7).
The source storm was a large mesoscale convective system (MCS) over northern Mexico, located approximately 145 to 175 miles to my south and southwest. At the same time, a waxing gibbous Moon, about 10½ days into its lunar cycle, was shining brightly in the western sky with an apparent magnitude of approximately -11.47. The storm provided the electrical activity needed to produce the sprites, while the bright Moon worked against my ability to record them.
The Moon created the biggest obstacle during the session. While moonlight makes the landscape easier to see, it also brightens the night sky and reduces the contrast needed to record faint sprites. Photographing a sprite under these conditions is much like trying to photograph the brief flash of a single firefly from several football fields away while someone shines a bright floodlight into your camera lens. In several images, the Moon's glow is visible along the right side of the frame. Thin clouds reflecting the moonlight added another challenge, although they occasionally enhanced the overall appearance of the photograph.
I also tested higher ISO settings to see if additional sprite detail could be recorded. Instead, the brighter settings caused the sky and moonlit clouds to become overexposed, washing out the very faint light I was trying to capture. ISO 320 proved to be the best compromise, preserving the delicate sprite structures while keeping the sky from becoming too bright.
Some post-processing was applied to reduce the effects of scattered moonlight and improve image quality where thin clouds had interfered with the view. The processing was intended to better represent what the camera recorded, not to alter the sprite itself.
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