A Kimberley photographer has captured a spectacular and rare atmospheric phenomenon that has been described as nature's giant neon sign.

Ben Broady is known for taking eye-catching time-lapse videos of electrical storms around his hometown of Kununurra in the east Kimberley.

But during a recent night-time shoot, unusual flashes above a distant thunderstorm caught his attention.

"I caught it out of my peripheral [vision] and I turned to look, and then it flashed again," Mr Broady said.

"It was like a big ribbon coming out of the top of the cloud and going miles into the sky."

The fleeting glimpse of something strange prompted the avid storm chaser to go through the still images he had taken to compose a time-lapse video of the storm.

There, amongst hundreds of shots, were just three frames showing an ethereal red light hanging high over the distant storm.

"In the photo it looks as spectacular as an aurora, but with the naked eye, the sprite only lasts milliseconds," he said.

"It's not the first time I captured them, honestly, but that is the brightest or most prominent, striking feature that I've ever caught of them."

Ben Broady is passionate about photographing Kimberley landscapes and weather. ( Supplied: Ben Broady Photography )

It was only when Mr Broady started showing other weather photography enthusiasts that he started to realise how rare this photo was.

"I was really showing it off to some of my weather-nerd mates to get them frothing on it," he said.

"There was a guy in Broome, Richard, that said, 'Mate, you need to get that out there, people are going to lose their minds over this.'"

NASA is investigating cloud top lightning phenomena, which includes red sprites, blue elves, and gamma ray bursts, with sensors on the International Space Station. ( Supplied: NASA )

Nature's giant neon sign

Astrophysicist from the Australian National University, Dr Brad Tucker, said Mr Broady has captured a rarely seen phenomenon called a sprite.

"Sprites are fairly rare," Dr Tucker said.

"It was only into the 80s and 90s that someone started to say, this is what we think it is, and there are different categories.

What is known is that sprites are occasionally caused by an interaction between thunderstorms and the ionosphere, which is the part of the atmosphere above 50 kilometres high where the sun's radiation causes atoms to become charged.

Dr Tucker said the light is generated in a similar way to the process inside neon signs.

"You don't see the neon gas, you only see it when you put a bit of electrical charge, you plug it into the wall, and you can make the gas glow," he said.

"We see it come into play on a big scale here in this photo.

"It's a lot of nitrogen being excited into a giant space neon sign."

A powerful lightning bolt in the east Kimberley. ( Supplied: Ben Broady Photography )

Earthly aurora

The process is similar to that of an aurora, a display which is usually seen in the upper atmosphere closer to the northern and southern poles.

But where auroras are produced by charged particles continuously stream from the sun, sprites are produced by brief pulses of electromagnetism from powerful thunderstorms.

"Essentially it's almost an earthly aurora," Dr Tucker said.

It is thought that one of the ingredients required to produce a sprite, is a positive lightning bolt where electrons flow from the ground up to a cloud.

Positive lightning is usually much rarer and more powerful than the more typical negative lightning bolt, where electrons are transferred from a cloud to the Earth.

But Dr Tucker said the exact process that leads to the formation of a sprite is not fully understood.

"There is a set of conditions that people are still trying to grasp as to why some thunderstorms tend to produce these brilliant balls of red nitrogen gas," he said.

After seeing sprites flicker above a tropical storm, as well as capturing their beauty in his photography, Ben Broady said his mind has been blown by what he has seen.

"Primarily I'm a photographer, but you see something like this, and weather in general, you take an interest in understanding it better," he said.

"I've been extremely lucky and privileged to capture a sprite."