A trio of photographers in New Zealand have captured images of “red sprites”, or red lightning, one of the rarest light phenomena in the world, in which luminous crimson flashes appear in the sky.

New Zealand photographer Tom Rae and Spanish photographers Dan Zafra and José Cantabrana set out to shoot the Milky Way over the Ōmārama Clay cliffs in the South Island on 11 October, when they chanced upon the extraordinary event.

The photographers thought they would be lucky to get clear skies that evening, but their night turned into “an unforgettable one”, Rae told the Guardian.

Cantabrana suggested they might be treated to a display of red sprites, when he saw a storm brewing over the horizon, Rae said.

“He was checking his files for a Milky Way panorama and discovered he had captured red sprites,” Rae said. “Dan and I just could not believe it – there was a whole bunch of screaming and shouting and all sorts going on in the dark.”

Red sprites are bursts of electrical energy in the upper atmosphere, generated by thunderstorms. Unlike lightning that shoots towards the ground, red sprites shoot upwards towards the upper atmosphere, creating forms that look like columns, carrots or even jellyfish. The first photograph of a red sprite was taken – accidentally – in 1989, by a team at the University of Minnesota.

They are so brief – lasting just a millisecond – that they are rarely visible to the naked eye, but Rae got lucky. “I happened to be looking directly at one when it happened – just a perfect coincidence looking at the right part of the sky and I saw a brief red flash,” he said.

Witnessing the phenomena was a dream for Rae, an award-winning night scape photographer. “It looks like you’re seeing something that is not real, it’s very ethereal … it’s this very deep red colour that is there for a split second, so it’s really interesting to see.”

Capturing a red sprite requires a mastery of technical photography, as well as an understanding of science and creative flare, Rae said. “It’s a really involved type of photography that’s very rewarding as well.”

Zafra said it was one of the “most extraordinary nights” of his life. “I could see the Milky Way glowing above the horizon while these enormous red tendrils of light danced above a storm hundreds of kilometres away,” Zafra said.

To his knowledge, there are no other images showing red sprites and the southern hemisphere Milky Way in one frame.

“It was one of those moments when you know you’re witnessing something you’ll probably never see again.”