Photo of 100 lightning bolts falling in the sky of Türkiye
Photographer Uğur İkizler combined all the lightning that occurred over 50 minutes in the middle of a violent thunderstorm in one image.
The image captures at least three types of lightning during a thunderstorm. Photo: Uğur kizler
A photographer captured a time-lapse photo of more than 100 lightning bolts appearing during a thunderstorm in Türkiye. Astronomical photographer Uğur İkizler created this impressive image by combining multiple frames of the sky near his home in the coastal town of Mudanya, collected over 50 minutes at midnight on June 16, which means on average Lightning strikes every 30 seconds.
"Each one of those lightning bolts is beautiful to the eye, but when I combined all the lightning in one frame, the scene was terrifying. The thunderstorm was a huge visual feast," İkizler shared.
At least three different types of lightning are clearly visible from the image, including lightning between clouds, lightning from cloud to ground, and lightning from cloud to water, according to Spaceweather.com . It is not uncommon for multiple lightning bolts to appear during such a thunderstorm. Worldwide, there are 1.4 billion lightning strikes each year, or 3 million lightning a day and 44 lightning a second, according to the British Meteorological Agency.
Each individual lightning bolt has a voltage ranging from 100 million to one billion volts. This much energy can push the ambient air temperature up between 10,000 and 33,000 degrees Celsius, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). For comparison, the surface temperature of the Sun is only 5,500 degrees Celsius.
The new photo shows the characteristic zigzag shape of lightning. Researchers still don't know exactly what causes this zigzag shape, but a 2022 study suggests it's the result of a highly conductive form of oxygen that accumulates abnormally when lightning strikes the ground. .
Rare photo reveals how lightning rod connects to lightning
BRAZIL Using a high-speed camera, the team photographed lightning striking down at a speed of 370 kilometers per second.
Lightning rods attempt to connect to the downward current. Photo: Diego Rhamon/INPE
Marcelo Saba, a researcher at Brazil's National Institute for Space Research (INPE), and graduate student Diego Rhamon, took a rare image showing the connection between lightning strikes and nearby lightning rods, Interesting Engineering on March 14 reported. The new study is published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
To take pictures, the team used a high-speed camera system installed on the roofs of high-rise buildings. The photo was born thanks to good planning and luck when taken at the right time, helping to reveal details about parts of the lightning. According to the team, the image shows a negatively charged lightning bolt hitting the ground close to the ground at a speed of 370 kilometers per second.
"When lightning is several tens of meters above the ground, lightning rods and tall objects atop nearby buildings discharge positive charges upward, competing to connect with the downward lightning," Saba said. The last picture was taken 25 milliseconds before the connection occurred and lightning struck one of the buildings.
Saba started researching lightning with high-speed cameras in 2003, building one of the largest databases of high-speed lightning videos.
The team used a camera that captures 40,000 frames per second. The high-speed equipment allows them to assess the impact of such lightning strikes, especially in the absence of appropriate protective measures. In this case, a fault in the installation caused the area to open and the 30,000 ampere current to strike caused significant damage.
There are a total of 31 channels of lightning precursors (also known as precursor rays) that are launched from nearby buildings to block the descending negative progenitor rays, according to the team.
Lightning can also be classified as negative or positive depending on the charge transmitted to the ground. Experts estimate that only 20% of lightning touches the ground, the rest is confined to the clouds.
According to the team, such lightning bolts can be up to 100 kilometers long and carry currents as strong as 30,000 amperes. "The temperature of a typical lightning bolt is 30,000 degrees Celsius, five times the surface temperature of the Sun," Saba said.
Lightning forms due to friction between ice particles, water droplets, and hail, releasing an electrical charge and creating polarization between different cloud regions. Such potentials can range from 100 million volts to 1 billion volts. Since the charges want to follow the path of least resistance, lightning will branch, often in a zigzag pattern instead of a straight line.
"The path of lightning is determined by the different electrical properties of the atmosphere, which are not uniform," explains Saba. Lightning rods do not repel or attract electrical currents, but only provide lightning an easy and safe path to the ground, the team said.