
The author saw his first sprite on December 5, 2005. He created this photo-illustration (the stars shown here were not the real stars he saw the phenomenon against) to demonstrate the dim object’s appearance and superlative size. “Seeing this ‘phantom jellyfish’ made me question my sanity,” the author jokes. “It was that freakish.”
Stephen James O’Meara
Summer is upon us. With it comes the promise of hot days and, occasionally, sky-splitting lightning. But did you know that, under the right conditions, distant thunderstorms can also produce an array of eerie light spectacles?