Amazing photo shows three
types of lightning and 100
lightning strikes
Kate McIntyre,June 27, 2023 6:30PM
An amazing photograph has captured 100 lightning strikes and three different types of
lightning in less than one hour during a severe thunderstorm in Turkey.
Astrophotographer Uğur İkizler used time-lapse photography, which is when a series
of photos are taken one after the other over a period of time to show the change or
movement that has occurred.
In this case, the photos were taken around midnight on June 16 over a 50-minute
period and combined in one electrifying image of 100 lightning strikes. This means
there was one lightning strike every 30 seconds on average.
“Each and every one of them is beautiful, but when I combined all the lightning bolts
into a single frame, it was a frightening sight,” the photographer told Live Science
magazine.
WHAT
IS
LIGHTNING?
Clouds are made up of water and ice. Air currents push up and gravity pushes down
and the water and ice are compressed, or squashed together.
The particles in the clouds collect an electrical charge from all that pushing about, just
like the electrostatic charge you create when you rub a balloon on your hair.
Lightning strikes when so much electricity builds up in a cloud it is strong enough to
break out of the clouds and into the air. The charged air particles form a channel which
the lightning bolt travels through to hit the ground within a fraction of a second.
DIFFERENT
TYPES
OF
LIGHTNING
There are several types of lightning but the most common are chain lightning, fork
lightning and sheet lightning.
Chain lightning: when the lightning bolt begins and ends in the clouds – like a chain
from one cloud to another.
Fork lightning: when the lightning bolt begins in a cloud and hits the ground or water.
Sheet lightning: when the whole sky lights up in a flash instead of the lightning showing
as a bolt or zigzagging line.
At least three different types of lightning can be seen in Mr İkizler’s photo. These are
cloud-to-cloud chain lightning, cloud-to-ground fork lightning and cloud-to-water fork
lightning.
There are also other types of lightning that we don’t often see. They are:
Ball lightning: where lightning forms a slow moving ball that can burn objects in its
path.
Red sprite:, where a red burst of electricity happens very high above storm clouds.
Blue jet: where bright, blue sprays of electricity start in the centre of a storm cloud
about 40km above the ground.
Heat lightning: lightning near the horizon that is reflected by high clouds.
Elves: huge 300km wide halos of ring-shaped lightning, created in the upper, positively
charged portion of the cloud.
There are 1.4 billion lightning strikes every year, or around 3 million every day across
the world. That works out to be about 44 lightning bolts every second, according to
Britain’s national weather service.