Posted on 09/27/2020 5:19:00 PM PDT by MtnClimber
Explanation: Have you ever watched a lightning storm in awe? Join the crowd. Oddly, details about how lightning is produced remains a topic of research. What is known is that updrafts carry light ice crystals into collisions with larger and softer ice balls, causing the smaller crystals to become positively charged. After enough charge becomes separated, the rapid electrical discharge that is lightning occurs. Lightning usually takes a jagged course, rapidly heating a thin column of air to about three times the surface temperature of the Sun. The resulting shock wave starts supersonically and decays into the loud sound known as thunder. Lightning bolts are common in clouds during rainstorms, and on average 44 lightning bolts occur on the Earth every second. Pictured, over 60 images were stacked to capture the flow of lightning-producing storm clouds in July over Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA.
(Excerpt) Read more at apod.nasa.gov ...
For more detail go to the link and click on the image for a high definition image. You can then zoom by moving the magnifying glass over an area and then clicking. The side bars will move the zoomed area over the photograph.
Pinging the APOD list.
Wow, looks like a Bob Ross or William Alexander painting!
OMG, that is magnificent. Still, I’d rather see it in a photo than to be there in person. Just sayin’. :-)
That’s what I was thinking.
Randall Flagg around?
I’ll never forget a thunderstorm I saw years ago while driving across Nebraska. It was huge, but distant enough that I could see the entire cell, and fortunately there was no rain or clouds between me and the storm to obscure my view. The result was that I could see constant lightning every second or so, occurring inside the storm. I’d never seen anything like it, a huge cloud that was constantly flickering and flashing with lightning, with little if any pause between strikes. Reminded me of how thunderstorms look when filmed from the space station.
an eerie kind of scary
Magnificent!!!
Looks like a dog jumping into a cushion.
Until the spacecraft descends below the clouds there is no reason to panic.
https://www.lightningmaps.org/#m=oss;t=3;s=0;o=0;b=;ts=0;z=5;y=37.6316;x=-92.8564;d=2;dl=2;dc=0;tr=1;
I remember in St Petersburg in about 1963 watching lightning start at a point in the southern sky crawl in networks across the whole sky silently.
G-d is the best painter!
I love these pictures.
WOW! Fantastic!
Zowser!
Stacked photos have a decidedly Cecil B. DeMille “Wrath of God” look to them!
If you look on the left center it appears that there are several instances of ball lighting.
Thanks for posting.
It almost looks like a painting, like it’s not real.
It’s beautiful.
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