The Daily Populous Tuesday October 29th, 2024 evening edition
Image from preview.redd.it and submitted by PsychCute

87StickUpKid on October 29th, 2024 at 10:58 UTC »

Imagine the existential dread of seeing this as a caveman

currently__working on October 29th, 2024 at 11:02 UTC »

I have never heard of this shit in my life.

Spartan2470 on October 29th, 2024 at 12:49 UTC »

Here are much higher-quality versions of these images. Credit to the photographer, Nicolas Escurat. Per his FB posting of this (and Google Translate):

> September 15, 2023 Castelnaud, France

> I can't believe it...🤩 ...a remarkable and powerful leprechaun appeared just above this Château in Dordogne on the night of September 10-11😀

> It was the most beautiful specimen observed during the night. This type of transient luminous phenomenon, called a "sprite" in English, usually appears in the mesosphere between 40 and 90 km altitude during major storms. These 50km high red flashes of cold plasma are always very surprising when they appear in the sky.🙂

> This ionizing monster appeared suddenly at 1h33min52sec towards the end of a storm which took place between Pau (64) and Mont de Marsan (40)

> The distance to the source lightning was "only" about 196 km. The positive lightning that triggered this wonder of nature fell south of Hagetmau. It must have made a thunderous noise when it hit the ground.⚡️

> For those who will soon want to see this "red sprite" with a better resolution, I also managed to capture it with a longer focal length (105mm). The other 2 images are made with a 50mm lens.

> And with the camera in photo mode, I was finally able to capture this same leprechaun wrapped in a nice "airglow". To achieve this, I used a brand new shooting technique that I still need to refine...

> Otherwise, I've never seen such a big sprite so close up!

> When he appeared, the sky lit up and his soul came to imprint the camera sensor. The atmosphere is unreal, it feels like a science fiction movie but it is reality. Our Earth offers us this magnificent spectacle.

> So in the end, I don't regret having tried this framing because the weather conditions weren't very good during the photo shoot.

> I am therefore delighted to show you these images.😋Please feel free to share them around you.🙂 And for those who have questions about the phenomenon or anything else, do not hesitate😉

He also posted video of this phenomenon.

This was featured on NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day on October 2, 2023. Per there:

> Sometimes lightning occurs out near space. One such lightning type is red sprite lightning, which has only been photographed and studied on Earth over the past 25 years. The origins of all types of lightning remain topics for research, and scientists are still trying to figure out why red sprite lightning occurs at all. Research has shown that following a powerful positive cloud-to-ground lightning strike, red sprites may start as 100-meter balls of ionized air that shoot down from about 80-km high at 10 percent the speed of light. They are quickly followed by a group of upward streaking ionized balls. Featured here is an extraordinarily high-resolution image of a group of red sprites. This image is a single frame lasting only 1/25th of a second from a video taken above Castelnaud Castle in Dordogne, France, about three weeks ago. The sprites quickly vanished -- no sprites were visible even on the very next video frame.

Edit: OP's account (PsychCute) is odd. It was born seven days ago and its first comment is a copy/paste of /u/Prstty's comment here. Most of its other comments are just a few words long.