Talk about a photographic trifecta.  The Astronomy Picture Of The Day, from July 5th, is a photo taken in January 2007 in Perth, Australia wherein a group of people watching the Australia Day celebratory fireworks catch a glimpse of Comet McNaught and a lightning storm.

You might be wondering what the Aussies are doing on the beach in January, wearing shorts no less.  Let us not forget our solstices.

The photo is amazing, stunning, and extremely well captured.  The editor for APOD hits the nail right on the head when they wrote: “Sometimes the sky itself is the best show in town.”

Source: APOD 2008 July 5 - Comet Between Fireworks and Lightning.

Last night, while we were watching a movie, there was a constant flashing outside of our window.  The flashing kept getting more and more consistent and, seemingly, closer.  One of the strikes was close enough for the power to hiccup and so, after turning off and unplugging just about everything in the house, we managed to shoot a few photos of the lightning barrage.

These photos were taken with Eliza’s Canon Digital Rebel XTi in manual mode with an ISO of 100, F/3.5, and a 30-second exposure.  I think.

It took quite a bit of changing the settings, and snapping long exposures, to get the shots that I did.  Next time I’ll know what settings seem to work best and I’ll setup on a window without a screen.

Well I was digging through some video and I found the video that Eliza had taken while I took these photos of the lightning. Although the majority of the video is a simple black screen with Eliza and I having a very uninteresting conversation – I find it a nice video to see how we ended up getting those lightning photos.

If you are reading this in some type of feed-reader, be sure to come to the site to read this post so you too can watch the video.

What I thought was really interesting, after having uploaded this video to Viddler and tagging it with lightning each time a bolt shot across the screen, was that we technically gave ourselves a “graph” of sorts to show the frequency of lightning over the 10-minute period of the video. If you look at the timeline of the video each black dot on the timeline represents a bolt of lightning. Pretty cool if you are a geek like me. This was an unexpected result but a welcomed one.

Hope you enjoy this video and the photos. Thanks for recording it Eliza.

[tags]lightning, video, viddler, weather, storm, thunder, bolt, colin devroe, eliza devroe, photos[/tags]
[slug]lightning-video[/slug]

Yearly camping trips seem to be the norm for me since I was a teenager. Once married, the trend has continued, though Eliza was not always able to go. This time I was very happy she was able to go, even though the mosquitoes seemed to pay her much more attention than most of us.

This year, we had the opportunity to camp somewhere close to home. With gas prices the way they are, this just seemed like a good idea. We chose to camp at Keen Lake campground in Waymart, Pennsylvania – which is about a 25-minute drive from our apartment to our campsite. The fact that it was only a 25-minute drive ended up coming in handy.

Left to right starting in back: Chris, Bryan
Second row: Colin, Eliza, Trudy, Josh, Niki
Front row: Giana, Ivan, Ava, Andrea

On our first night at Keen Lake, there was a horrible thunderstorm that hit at around 3am. It was over by about 5am, but most of us were up at that point. What made this thunderstorm so bad, was not necessarily the few inches of rain that ended up failing in such a short period of time – but rather the lightning and thunder.

This storm was literally over our heads. Frighteningly close. One particular bolt of lightning struck the island in the middle of the lake we were sleeping next to. If I had to guess, I’d guess that the island was about 1,500 feet from our very own feet. Those 1,500 feet (or ~ 1/3 of a mile), were all water mind you. When this bolt hit, it made a sound like no other I’ve ever heard. It literally compressed my chest and made me entire body come off of our air mattress. Others said that they felt the same pressure when it hit.

The next day, while kayaking I was talking to Mike Kopa (ex-coworker of mine circa 1999-2001 and now employee of Keen Lake campground) and he told me what happened when that bolt hit the island. On said island is a cabin available for rent. A family of 5 (I think), and their dog were staying in the cabin when the bolt struck. The bolt hit the TV antenna for the cabin, followed it down through the TV (blew the TV right out) and spread through the cabin via the electrical system. Where cords led to lamps, the rug burned. Various appliances were laid useless. And most tragic of all, the family dog was sleeping on one of the extension cords and lost its life due to electric shock.

An incredible story to be sure. But it does show you the sheer force of nature is something that, while attempted by many smart individuals, can never be stopped. I remember talking with an electrician that used to work for a hospital in Chicago, Illinois. He called lightning “magic”, as all their attempts to stop it were useless. He said “…if hit directly with lightning, there is almost nothing you can do to stop it. We have circuit breakers in the hospital that are so big that you wouldn’t be able to touch both sides – lightning jumps across them as if they didn’t even exist.”.

The rest of the weekends weather was very nice, and we did our best to take advantage of it. We went kayaking, played frisbee and bocce, and swam at every opportunity. You can see photos from our trip in this photo set on Flickr.

Can’t wait to go camping again, though I’d rather not wait an entire year to do so.

[tags]camping, keen lake, lightning, thunder, storm, camp, campsite, campground, pennsylvania, waymart, colindevroe[/tags]

Lightning illuminates everything, click above for more photos

Wow. We were just treated to an extraordinary display of nature. Thunderstorms, while not uncommon in our neck of the woods, typically pass very quickly. Tonight we had a thunderstorm that went on for a few hours, and is still fading slowly as I write this.

Eliza managed to video tape at least 8 really great bolts that ripped through the night sky. I’ll see if I can get her to post them up online and jot down a description for you all.

While Eliza was doing that, I was trying to take some photos of the bolts, but that is much easier said than done. Out of a little more than one-hundred tries, I was able to get these 24. Out of these 24 only a few are really good. But they were worth the effort and the wait.

Conclusion: Lightning rocks.

[tags]weather, photos, lightning, lightning bolt, sky, night, thunderstorm[/tags]