A spectacular atmospheric phenomenon was captured during a violent thunderstorm over Toulouse on August 13, 2025, when photographer Christophe Suarez successfully photographed rare red sprites alongside a meteor from a distance of 500 kilometers (approximately 310 miles). The extraordinary images show three reddish streaks bursting into the sky north of Toulouse, resembling fireworks about to explode.
The dramatic capture occurred at 10:44 PM as a severe storm battered the "Pink City" of Toulouse in the Haute-Garonne region. These transient luminous events (TLEs), also known as "red sprites" or upper-atmospheric lightning, appear above thunderstorms but are typically invisible to the naked eye. Suarez positioned himself with his equipment at a viewpoint above the commune of Le Muy, near his home in Fréjus in the Var region.
"In my area, the sky was clear, and it was barely nighttime when the storm, already well established, began sending sprites. This lasted until half past midnight," Suarez told France 3 Occitanie. The photographer, founder of the website chasseur-d-orage.com (storm chaser), had anticipated the massive storm cell that would strike the Toulouse sky and strategically positioned himself to capture the phenomenon.
The timing made this particular night extraordinary, as it coincided with the peak of the Perseid meteor shower, an annual celestial event visible in Earth's atmosphere. Suarez hoped to achieve a rare double capture of both the high-altitude lightning and a shooting star. "It wasn't obvious because the exposure times are very short. And it was still very hot, I expected to have some kind of veil, a heat haze, but I told myself that with my equipment, I would still manage to make images," the storm chaser explained.
To photograph these fleeting phenomena that last only milliseconds, Suarez employs specialized video techniques. "To isolate the sprites from light pollution, you have to make videos. Otherwise, it doesn't work," he explained. "We shoot at very, very high sensitivity, so if I just take a capture, the image will be noisy." This means the image would not be sharp enough and would be too bright for proper visibility.
It was only after reviewing his footage and assembling images separated by milliseconds within the same sequence that the passionate photographer realized he had successfully captured both the red sprites and the shooting star. "It was magnificent!" exclaimed Suarez, still amazed by this shot, whose technique he detailed and shared in a video on his Facebook account.
Suarez began photographing sprites in 2019 and has since perfected his technique with the help of Stéphen Vetter, a photographer passionate about astronomy who "got me started and trained me in this." To immortalize these phenomena, the storm chaser had one of his cameras, a Nikon Z6 with a 40mm or 85mm lens, de-filtered and then re-filtered by a specialist to allow more infrared light to pass through.
Although he has stepped back from running his specialized website, Suarez remains part of a community of enthusiasts who exchange extensively about these phenomena. "We are not scientists, but our shots interest them a lot because they allow them to glean information or accompany their communications with images of artistic quality," he continued. In June, two other photographers captured these red lightning bolts above the Pic du Midi.
The existence of sprites, long theorized, was only proven in the early 1990s, somewhat by chance. They occur between 40 and 140 kilometers altitude, probably following powerful positive lightning strikes between clouds and Earth, causing ionizing disturbances above cumulonimbus clouds. Several hypotheses still exist about their exact origin, making their observations even more mysterious and fascinating for both scientists and photography enthusiasts alike.
