An extraordinary phenomenon has left residents of a small Italian town in awe, and it's not your typical UFO sighting. For the second time in three years, a breathtaking red halo has appeared over Possagno, a picturesque town nestled in the foothills of the Alps.
Nature photographer Valter Binotto captured this mysterious glow on November 17th, adding to the intrigue surrounding this rare occurrence. The halo, estimated to be an impressive 200 kilometers wide, hovered at an altitude of 100 kilometers, resembling a scene straight out of a sci-fi movie.
But here's where it gets controversial: Binotto, an expert in his field, believes this phenomenon is not alien-related. He explains that these halos are a result of a fascinating lighting phenomenon known as 'emission of light and very low-frequency perturbations due to electromagnetic pulse sources', or ELVEs for short. ELVEs are an expanding ring of light that forms in the lower ionosphere, triggered by the electromagnetic pulse (EMP) from a powerful lightning strike.
"The red ring marks the spot where the EMP interacts with Earth's ionosphere," Binotto shared with Spaceweather.com. And this is the part most people miss: the EMP responsible for this spectacle was released by a lightning bolt with an electrical current of approximately 303 kilo-amperes, a force far beyond what we typically see in thunderstorms.
ELVEs are incredibly short-lived, lasting only a millisecond, which makes observing and explaining them without modern equipment a challenging task. NASA first discovered these glowing rings in the 1990s, and they categorize ELVEs as part of Transient Luminous Events (TLEs), a collection of colorful, lightning-fast flashes generated by thunderstorms above the clouds.
On Earth, ELVEs appear reddish due to their interaction with nitrogen in the upper atmosphere. However, on planets like Jupiter, with a hydrogen-rich atmosphere, they can appear blue or pink. In 2019, scientists working with data from Juno's ultraviolet spectrograph instrument (UVS) made a groundbreaking discovery, confirming the presence of TLEs in Jupiter's upper atmosphere, a theory long speculated but never proven.
So, the next time you spot a mysterious red halo, remember it might just be nature's way of putting on a spectacular light show. But what do you think? Could there be more to these halos than meets the eye? Share your thoughts and theories in the comments below!
