Mysterious glow in the sky scared the Italians

Naturalist photographer Walter Binotto has published a picture of a glowing disk in the sky. He noticed it when he was in the town of Possagno in northern Italy on March 27.

For a long time, no one could understand what kind of glow it was and how it originated. It seems that some eyewitnesses even believed in aliens… Nevertheless, there is no mysticism in this mysterious phenomenon.

According to Live Science, the Italians saw the so—called "elf" (from the English ELVES, that is, Emission of Light and Very Low Frequency perturbations due to Electromagnetic Pulse Sources - "light emission and very low frequency disturbances due to a pulse from an electromagnetic source"). This is a rare type of stratospheric or mesospheric disturbances resulting from intense electrification during a thunderstorm.

Disc-shaped regions are formed when electromagnetic pulses emitted by lightning enter the Earth's ionosphere and affect its upper atmosphere. They usually occur at an altitude of 80 to 644 km above the ground and can reach hundreds of kilometers in diameter.

As a rule, "elves" are visible only to satellites orbiting the Earth. According to Spaceweather.com Binotto's new image is probably the best snapshot of this phenomenon ever captured from the surface of our planet.