Employees of the La Silla Observatory, located in the Atacama desert of Chile, took photos of a rare atmospheric phenomenon - red sprites in the night sky.

Axar.az reports that information about this was published on the official website of the European Southern Observatory.

"Sprites are cold plasma discharges that occur in the upper layers of the earth's atmosphere. Unlike ordinary lightning, sprites occur much higher - 50-90 kilometers above sea level. Sprites are much cooler than lightning. Drawing a sprite is a very difficult task. The observatory that took the picture is located in a desert high above sea level, where the sky is very clear and there is no light pollution. These factors help to observe the rarest atmospheric phenomena", the information states.