picture of a gamma-ray burst
U.S. and European scientists said on January 26 that they had caught their first ever "live" picture of a gamma-ray burst - powerful explosions from space that have mystified and intrigued astronomers for decades in this NASA photograph. Reuters

The beautiful phenomenon called red sprites is seen very rarely. It is a sudden burst of light that last for fractions of a second. It happens above the altitude of normal lightening and storm clouds that is nearly 50 miles above the ground and is a described as an electrical-breakdown phenomenon, that occurs for in an extremely short period. It is referred to as a Transient Luminous Event.

According to LiveScience, red sprites take many shapes, they look like carrots, crowns etc. It gets its deep colour because the electrical discharges mix with nitrogen molecules in the air. Though they have been known to occur since a century and had boggled scientists for long. Since, it lasts from a few milliseconds to up to two seconds, only a handful of people have recorded this phenomenon.

Mail Online reported that a photographer, Marko Korosec, 32, was one among the few who captured an image of the rare spectacle on his camera. He had been chasing the storms in Vivaro, Italy and was lucky enough to photograph the red sky.

View the photographs taken by Korosec, of the red sprites here.

The site reported that he was standing in a corn field nearly 200 miles from where the red sprites were occurring and he took the photographs. Korosec, who works as a system administrator for highways in Slovenia, told Mail Online that it is extremely difficult to capture the event, but the storm was very active and this worked to his advantage.

He said that one could never tell when it would happen and he considers himself very lucky to have got the shots. Moreover, he explained that even to be able to see them with the naked eye, would be very hard as they just appear as flashes and then disappear. "Only the strongest and the most bright ones were visible to the naked eyes," he said.

In his photographs, one can see a beautifully lit up night sky with sparkling red sprites, that almost look pink in colour against the night sky.

Till now no definite reason for its occurrence has been found, the site stated.