A rare red sprite has lit up the night sky in a flash that lasted less than a second.
Cameras caught the bright red jet bursting upward and splitting like sparks at the tip.
Officials say it is one of the clearest recordings of a red sprite their live feeds have ever taken.
The burst came with a thunderstorm cell over the sea.
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The cameras are located at the Jinzun Recreation Area in Donghe, Taitung County, Taiwan.
They locked the shot at about 10.43pm on 13 September.
A second county camera at the Southern Cross-Island Highway’s Daguan Mountain tunnel captured the same phenomenon.
East Coast National Scenic Area director Lin Wei-ling said a violent thunderstorm drove the high-altitude discharge.
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She said the tape first shows lightning near the ground, then a huge upward jet.
“The second is the red sprite,” she wrote as she posted the clip.
The glow was gone in under a second.
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Red sprites are brief high-altitude discharges of cold plasma, similar to the glow inside a fluorescent tube rather than a bolt of hot lightning.
They form 30 to 55 miles above the ground when storm clouds discharge into thinner air.
Professor Yang Yi-ching, of National Taitung University, said the cloud end can glow blue and the high end red.
He said a full burst from cloud to ionosphere can take in a blue jet, a red sprite and, higher still, elves.
Sunday’s complete flash, he added, is classed as a gigantic jet, a type named in 2004.
Yang said such bursts can happen worldwide and are not caused by typhoons.
He said Taiwan’s summer and autumn storms, plus dark eastern skies, give watchers a better chance when rain cells sit offshore.
The same camera network last filmed a sprite on 28 June 2025, and before that on 31 August 2024, as reported by What’s The Jam.
Staff said this clip is fuller because the beam rose from over the sea and the forks stayed sharp.
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