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image credit & copyright: Sergio Montúfar (Pinceladas Nocturnas)




have you ever watched a lightning storm in awe ?

join the crowd, details of what causes lightning are still being researched, but it is known that inside some clouds, internal updrafts cause collisions between ice and snow that slowly separate charges between cloud tops and bottoms

the rapid electrical discharges that are lightning soon result

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

on average, around the world, about 6000 lightning bolts occur between clouds and the Earth every minute


pictured earlier this month in a two-image composite, lightning stems from communication antennas near the top of Volcán de Agua (Volcano of Water) in Guatemala






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in apod.nasa.gov/apod