A mysterious UFO-shaped red light that has appeared in the Italian sky for the second time in three years has baffled scientists.
Conspiracy theorists have jumped in with numerous claims of extraterrestrial life as experts search for answers.
Photographer Valter Binotto captured the rare phenomenon with his camera lens on November 17, when the light appeared above the sky in the small Italian town of Possango at 10:45 a.m. local time.
Binotto also observed a similar phenomenon in 2023. Experts believe that this phenomenon, although much rarer, is not related to aliens.
They attributed it to a lightning-related process called ELVEs (emission of light and very low-frequency disturbances due to electromagnetic pulse sources), a process similar to how auroras occur.
Extremely powerful lightning sends an electromagnetic pulse that hits the Earth’s ionosphere, and charged nitrogen particles give it a red glow.
Capturing such a rare flash of lightning is sheer brilliance by the photographer as it only lasts a thousandth of a second, 100 times less than it takes a human to blink.
Binotto said he used specialized equipment and started shooting as soon as the right conditions appeared, adding: “I choose the frames where ELVE is visible from high-resolution video.”
ELVE is so limited that it was only discovered by NASA in 1990, and observing it twice over a small town was considered nearly impossible.
