The massive circle extended to at least 360 kilometers in diameter and covered the region until the Adriatic Sea.

People in parts of central Italy were amazed at a mysterious ring of red light that covered the skies on March 27, which looked like a scene straight out of a science fiction film. Photographer Valter Binotto managed to capture the appearance of the eerie ring in the skies.

Binotto captured the image from the small town of Possagno in the foothills of the Italian Alps. While the ring appeared over Central Italy, astronomers said that the massive circle extended to at least 360 kilometers in diameter and covered the region until the Adriatic Sea.

“The distance must be between 100 and 600km. Until now, I have photographed them above the skies of Italy, France, Croatia, Austria, and Hungary,” Binotto said in an Instagram post with the picture.

No. The eerie halo is an Elve, Emissions of Light and Very Low-Frequency Perturbations that are the result of Electromagnetic Pulse Sources. “The ELVE was generated by intense lightning in a storm near Ancona about 285 km south of me,” Binotto said.

Elves are a rare species of Sprite that is large-scale electrical discharges that occur high above a thunderstorm cloud. According to spaceweather.com, one of the lightning bolts was so strong that it generated an intense Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP), and the red ring marks the spot where the EMP hit Earth’s ionosphere.

Experts say that a normal lightning bolt carries 10 to 30 kilo-amperes of current. This bolt was about 10 times stronger than normal.

“I have been photographing these events since I discovered them. My first shot of a TLE, in particular of sprites, dates back to 2017. Since then, I have tried it whenever the right conditions present me or when a strong storm develops at the right distance and the sky above me is clear of clouds,” Binotto added.