It's a very stormy night tonight, not so much rain yet but an awful lot of lightning going on out there. I decided to take a crack at catching some of these bolts of high energy on film (well actually on a digital camera). So foolish me went out into the storm and set up a table with an umbrella, placed my camera and tripod on the table, and began snapping a series of 1-second images. I took about 500 pictures - gotta love those 1Gb memory cards!
Anyway the sky was crackling, thunder was rumbling, and in a strange way this energized me. A good storm always gets me going. It's almost like the atmosphere is just trembling with energy. The lightning was everywhere, lots of strikes in the clouds that lit up the whole area but didn't actually hit the Earth, and also a bunch that did.
I read somewhere that on average a lightning strikes carries as much energy as a ton of TNT. Old Ben Franklin was a brave man to mess with that kind of power.
It's also interesting that lightning occurs elsewhere in our solar system. I'm not exactly sure where it occurs, but I think perhaps there is lightning on Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Titan, and ???? Apparently whether lightning exists on Venus is debated - a quick Google search brought me to one page on Space.com that suggests there is no lightning on Venus, while another page on Space Today Online suggests that Venus has Earth-like lightning.
One of my favorite observatory pictures has always been the famous Kitt Peak lightning shot, which has been reproduced on posters and greeting cards. Mine of course is not quite so dramatic but I still find it rather exciting!
No comments:
Post a Comment