Red Sprite Above the Pleiades

From the photographer: “On the night between the 26th and the 27th of July I had planned to shoot the Milky Way, but when I arrived on location I saw a big storm very far on the horizon. So I decided to put my backup camera with a wide angle lens (16 mm) oriented towards the storm with the hope to capture some sprites (while the other camera started to shoot the Milky Way). After a few minutes, by checking the back-up camera pictures, with huge surprise to my eyes, I saw I captured a very small sprite. So I decided to point also the main camera toward the storm, with the hope to capture some more sprites. I put the 35 mm lens on one camera, and the 135 mm lens on the other camera.

From time to time I was stopping the acquisition to check if I was getting something…and here something (to me) unbelievable happened…I captured the exact same sprite with the 35 mm lens and with the 135 m lens. Of course I was pointing the 135 mm lens in the same direction, but I could never ever thought I could get exactly the same sprite on the 135 mm lens (due to the much narrower field of view). In the 35 mm lens picture you can see that the sprite is perfectly aligned with the Pleiades (one of my favorites sky objects…also here I was so happy you cannot imagine). Also, some air glow is visible, together with a very faint California nebula on the top right (I had to keep the exposure time quite low to avoid the trail and to get some contrast to see the sprites). When we switch to the 135 mm picture, we have a much closer and more detailed view of the sprite and, also, we see also a handful of other ‘red filaments’ which I guess are other minor discharges (these ones are not resolved n the 35 mm lens picture). The cherry on the cake: the sprite shape reminded me of the shape of a heart (OK it actually can remind the shape of a ghost…but I like seeing more a heart shape). Click the second photo to see a close-up view of the sprites.”

Technical details:

1) 35 mm, iso 3200, f 1.4, 6.5 s

2) 135 mm, iso 3200, f 2, 4 s