From the April 2010 issue

Stephen James O’Meara’s Secret Sky: Phantasmagoria: transient luminous events

June 2010: Seeing strange lights in the sky doesn't necessarily mean you're imagining things.
By | Published: April 26, 2010
June 2010 jellyfish sprite
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?