- A red halo was spotted twice in three years over Possagno, Italy by Valter Binotto
- The halo measured 200 km across and hovered at an altitude of 100 km above the town
- The phenomenon is an ELVE caused by electromagnetic pulses from powerful lightning strikes
For the second time in three years, a mysterious halo of red light has been spotted over a small Italian town, located in the foothills of the Alps. The bizarre UFO-like glow was captured by nature photographer Valter Binotto on November 17, around 10:45 local time. The halo was estimated to be 200 kilometres across whilst hovering at an altitude of 100 kilometres. It bore a striking resemblance to the halo that Binotto spotted in March 2023, at the same spot in Possagno -- a small town of around 2,200 people in northern Italy.
According to Binotto, these fascinating halos are a rare lighting-related phenomenon called an 'emission of light and very low-frequency perturbations due to electromagnetic pulse sources', or ELVEs, not linked to extraterrestrial beings.
An ELVE is an expanding ring of light that forms in the lower ionosphere, appearing above large thunderstorms and caused by the electromagnetic pulse (EMP) from a lightning strike. They are short-lived, lasting only a millisecond, which makes them difficult to observe and explain without modern equipment.
"The red ring marks the spot where the EMP hit Earth's ionosphere," Binotto was quoted as saying by Spaceweather.com.
He added that the EMP was released by a lightning bolt with an electrical current of approximately 303 kilo-amperes, which is between 10 and 30 times higher than an average thunderstorm discharge.
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Transient Luminous Events
NASA first discovered these glowing rings in the 1990s, which makes spotting two over the same tiny town extremely unlikely. The space agency categorises ELVEs as part of Transient Luminous Events (TLEs).
"TLEs are colourful, bright, faster-than-lightning flashes that thunderstorms generate above the clouds. TLEs can take a variety of fanciful shapes with equally fanciful names," NASA explains.
On Earth, ELVEs appear reddish in colour due to their interaction with nitrogen in the upper atmosphere. However, on planets like Jupiter, where the atmosphere mostly consists of hydrogen, they appear either blue or pink. In 2019, scientists working with data from Juno's ultraviolet spectrograph instrument (UVS) discovered the presence of TLEs in the upper reaches of Jupiter for the first time, having long theorised about them.
