A mysterious red halo appears over an Italian town 

A huge, circular halo of mysterious red light, which looks like it is straight out of a sci-fi movie, was recently observed in the sky above the northern Italian town Possagno. However, most people missed it as it came and went within milliseconds.  

Fortunately, the world got to know about this bizarre spectacle thanks to nature photographer Valter Binotto whose advanced camera lens caught images of the luminous halo. Later, it was also reported that the enormous red circle which was approximately 360 kilometres in diameter was mainly spread across the sky of central Italy and part of the adjoining Adriatic Sea. So, what made the ring look as if it was hanging over the town? Plain old illusion!  

Anyway, you must be wondering by now what the halo was. Well, initially, it was thought to be made by a UFO. However, later, scientists realised from Binotto’s image that it was an ELVE. Okay, what on earth is that? As it turns out, it stands for “Emission of Light and Very Low Frequency Perturbations due to Electromagnetic Pulse sources.” But what are these ring flashes? Well, they are a rare type of stratospheric or mesospheric disturbance created from intense thunderstorm-induced electrification or SPRITE. They form when electromagnetic pulses or EMPs are generated from lightning which hits the Earth’s ionosphere (the ionised part of the upper atmosphere that is located 50 to 400 miles above the ground level).  

As they are extremely short-lived, they are hardly ever visible to naked human eyes. Instead, they get only captured by satellites orbiting the Earth. In fact, they were only recently discovered in 1990 thanks to NASA-based space shuttles that caught the phenomenon on camera installed within. However, this recent image by Binotto has been deemed by experts as “the best ever picture of one from the ground.”  

From experience, Binotto suggested that the ELVE may have been the result of EMPs produced by a heavy thunderstorm near Ancona, a city around 280 kilometres southeast of Possagno. Now, usually, lightning bolts do not emit EMPs because they do not carry enough current. But this storm was super intense, which is why, an unusually powerful bolt, at least 10 times more powerful than regular lightning bolts, likely generated the electrical shockwave, which then struck the ionosphere. As it happened, the electrons from inside the EMPs hit ionosphere, which in turn force out nitrogen atoms which then give off the crimson-coloured glow.  

Apart from other nature phenomena, so far, Binotto has captured in his lens many celestial events, including other ELVEs (since 2019) and Transient Luminous Events or TLEs.  

A similar event was last accounted for in February 2021 in Hawaii. They were high frequency lightning bolt shooting upwards instead of downwards.