Red sprites are an atmospheric phenomenon that occur at high altitudes above thunderstorms. They are visible here as tendrils of multiple red sprites in the night sky approximately 600 kilometres away from ESO's Paranal Observatory above distant thunderclouds. To capture multiple sprites, numerous exposures were combined to create this image. In the foreground sits a lone 1.8-metre Auxiliary Telescope, part of ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT).