Lizzy Huggler, 20 ,wears blue ties on her legs on the third day of the Firefly Music Festival in Dover, Delaware U.S., June 16, 2018. (Photo by Mark Makela/Reuters)

A child poses on the runway during a party hosted by Chasing Fireflies to introduce Gwen Stefani's Harajuku Lovers children's collection at Duff's Cakemix on September 24, 2015 in West Hollywood, California. (Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images for Chasing Fireflies)

“In the late afternoon after a rain, genji botaru fireflies (luciola cruciate) dance above the swollen creek. The rocks darkened by the rain reflecting the blue sky, and the yellow-green ribbon of the glow from the fireflies, make a beautiful contrast”. – Takehito Miyatake. (Photo by Takehito Miyatake/Steven Kasher Gallery)

Thousands of fireflies dance around Aurora Ghizzi Panizza, age 4, in the grounds of the 15th-century Castello di Torrechiara in Parma, Italy on July 16, 2022. (Photo by Alberto Ghizzi Panizza/Animal News Agency)

Those lights are actually bioluminescent shrimp, better known as sea fireflies, or, in Japan, as “umibotaru”. Visible every year from May until the end of October, they live in the sand around very shallow sea water and are often seen floating between the extremes of high and low tides. Here: Bioluminescent sea fireflies glittering like diamonds on the rocks and sand. Okayama, Japan. July 2016. (Photo by Trevor Williams/Jonathan Galione/Getty Images)

Angel Hall, 22, (C) and Bri Artis, 21, (R) dance in a silent disco on the fourth and final day of the Firefly Music Festival in Dover, Delaware on June 17, 2018. (Photo by Mark Makela/Reuters)

Illuminated Cut Paper Light Boxes by Hari & DeeptiDeepti Nair and Harikrishnan Panicker (known collectively as Hari & Deepti) are an artist couple who create paper cut light boxes. Each diorama is made from layers of cut watercolor paper placed inside a shadow box and is lit from behind with flexible LED light strips. The small visual narratives depicted in each work often play off aspects of light including stars, flames, fireflies, and planets.

While vacationing on the Maldives Islands, Taiwanese amateur photographer Will Ho stumbled onto an incredible stretch of beach covered in millions of bioluminescent phytoplankton. These tiny organisms glow similarly to fireflies and tend to emit light when stressed, such as when waves crash or when they are otherwise agitated. While the phenomenon and its chemical mechanisms have been known for some time, biologists have only recently began to understand the reasons behind it. Photo: Bioluminescent phytoplankton washes up on Maldives beach. (Photo by Will Ho)