Red sprites are a ghostly phenomenon that occur at high altitudes above thunderstorms. The tendrils of multiple red sprites can be seen in this image approximately 600 kilometers away from Chile's Paranal Observatory above distant thunderclouds. To capture multiple sprites in one image, two exposures were combined. The upper sprite occurred nearly 21 minutes before the lower one. In the foreground sits a lone 1.8-metre Auxiliary Telescope, part of the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT).