Lightning Inside of a WaterSpout..Unbelievable Picture

Originally posted by earth2
Ok, here is his repsonse when I asked him how he got the picture...

"I couldn't see the waterspout until I looked at the photo. It was after dark, and the sky was dark except for the lightning. I shot about 25 shots at iso 800, f6.5 and 1/8 sec, triggering the shutter when I saw light. The lightning was very strong and was making multiple hits with each bolt, so I captured a few of them. In this photo, taken 11 minutes earlier, you can see the waterspout forming near the top of the image."

Second message: "There was so much lightning in that area that I figured there may be a tornado sort of thing going on, as tornadoes are often accompanied by very frequent lightning bolts."

Awesome Lucky Pic, I say!

[edit on 25-5-2010 by earth2]

Above is the data for the picture taken with 1/8th of a second shutter speed this is what I THINK has happened the lightning strike has registered as you can see but because of the long shutter speed an effect similar to a light trail has also been pictured due to movement of the camera during the 1/8 0f a second he was on a boat remember.

Here is a light trail of an aircraft taking off

cdn-www.airliners.net...

reply to post by earth2


It looks strikingly like the time vortex from Donnie Darko. A portal to another dimension, it probably is not. However the truth is often stranger than fiction.

Who is to say? It just gets really old to hear from the old Photoshop moron crew who sit around looking for people to harass on ATS. Maybe it is a Photoshopped Dyson vacuum cleaner? Yeah, sure it is.

Great photo none the less.

Great photo, any chance we can get the full resolution version?

Thanks!

Originally posted by CHRLZ
And as many have pointed out, waterspouts just DON'T look like that, anyway.

To me, my best guess is that TWO strikes occurred in that 1/8 sec..
One that was 'slow' (yes, strikes do come in different speeds), and was motion blurred sideways to give the 'spout', and then one much brighter and faster strike, following the first path almost exactly (as they do). That second strike was the one that provided most of the light, and the reasonably sharp silhouette.

Hi CHRLZ, great to see you posting here. It would be a most unusual water spout if that's what it is so I agree that's pretty unlikely,

Your theory is an excellent one, as usual. Multiple strikes are common, and I think most strikes have what's called a leader that we usually don't see, that travels "slowly", possibly forming the blurred image that looks like the spout followed by the main strike:

Lightning

The progression of stepped leaders takes a comparatively long time (hundreds of milliseconds) to approach the ground. This initial phase involves a relatively small electric current (tens or hundreds of amperes), and the leader is almost invisible when compared with the subsequent lightning channel.

So maybe this was a leader that had a higher than normal degree of visibility and became blurred somehow.

Or a multiple strike:

High speed videos (examined frame-by frame) show that most lightning strikes are made up of multiple individual strokes. A typical strike is made of 3 to 4 strokes. There may be more.

Each re-strike is separated by a relatively large amount of time, typically 40 to 50 milliseconds. Re-strikes can cause a noticeable "strobe light" effect.

Each successive stroke is preceded by intermediate dart leader strokes akin to, but weaker than, the initial stepped leader. The stroke usually re-uses the discharge channel taken by the previous stroke.

The photographer said his exposure time was 1/8s or 125 milliseconds which is more than enough time to capture multiple strikes.

I almost posted this theory myself, but I wanted to look at a higher resolution version of the larger image before doing so, as I think there will be some clues in that image that aren't visible in the low res image or the high res image that's cropped to cut off the part where it comes out of the cloud.

The other reason I didn't post this theory is that I believe most lightning strikes are of extremely short duration, which can be measured in microseconds, and I suspect the duration would have to be considerably longer than that to obtain such a blurring effect. However a longer duration strike is possible, especially if it's the slow traveling leader instead.

But so far virtually every theory I can think of has problems that makes me doubt them and your theory is as good or better as any others that have been posted IMO, it's better than the waterspout theory.

And this video may be pretty good evidence to support your theory:


Look at the main strike about about 5 seconds, it's very bright. The rest of the video after that shows the same shape but at a much dimmer intensity, which could be the "blurred" image we see and called a waterspout.

Maybe we can look at a higher resolution image of the uncropped picture to give us some more clues if someone is kind enough to post that. But the only version posted so far is too low in resolution to analyze, I tried.

[edit on 26-5-2010 by Arbitrageur]

Incredible pic. It looks like a massive lightning bolt that is somehow generating
a surrounding plasma....as opposed to a ligtning bolt inside a waterspout.
Driving across South Dakota several years ago, we saw lightning doing things that I'd never seen or heard of. We saw a bolt repeatedly striking the same hilltop. It literally looked like a film loop being played over. We also saw what appered to be a small, purpleish plasma ring very low in the air over a corn field. It dissipated immediately....only visible for maybe 2 seconds.

Originally posted by smurfy
No better conductor for electricity than water

Pure water (aka sweet water) is a terrible electricity conductor for what it matters. Water only becomes conductive in a expressive way once salt is added to the mix and even then is far from being the best conductor.

Otherwise we wouldn't have electrical wires and water pipes as two different systems and instead a double water pipe system that would double as electrical energy distribution system.

As for the photo could it be due to a slow shutter or slow lenses that end up burning all of the fastest part of the bold movement as some sort of a halo?

I don't see signs of manipulation, nor do I have reasons to question the integrity of the photographer though.

No matter what it is it's a nice image.

It looks more like some sort of shock-wave type effect to me, although I've never seen anything like it before. Maybe some unusual atmospheric conditions at the time? I certainly don't think it's photoshopped and I don't think it's motion blur either. Definitely should send it into the local weather station or an expert at a local University, etc.

A few water spout videos.

There are many on the net but I thought it would be interesting to compare.

Google Video Link

[edit on 26-5-2010 by Realtruth]

I just can't think it's real, I don't know about Photoshop but it could be.

reply to post by Realtruth


Excellent clips you posted.

Its very obvious from the excellent images of the waterspouts you posted that the original picture is a fake.

It just goes to show, you can't fake real nature.

It never ceases to amaze me what people will do to get attention. I'm surprised this behaviour is allowed. Here we have a fake picture posted and then a few posts down their gallery is being advertised on an ATS thread.

Originally posted by Arbitrageur
..
Hi CHRLZ, great to see you posting here. It would be a most unusual water spout if that's what it is so I agree that's pretty unlikely,

Your theory is an excellent one, as usual. Multiple strikes are common, and I think most strikes have what's called a leader that we usually don't see, that travels "slowly", possibly forming the blurred image that looks like the spout followed by the main strike:

....

Thanks, Arb, your kind comments are much appreciated.

I'd very much like to see a full-res version too.. but the photog may not wish to release that as the image probably has a reasonable value, some of which would be lost to him if he 'gives it away'.

But nevertheless, I might get motivated and use the image supplied to do an analysis to see whether in fact the effect *is* likely to be motion blur or not. By copying an area along one side of the 'spout' and then transparently overlaying it on the other, it should be possible to see how closely they match. If it's a spout, then one would expect the two sides to vary in an irregular manner, but I suspect that it will be a close to perfect match.

And the point about 'slow' strikes is an important one. As a keen (but cowardly!) storm watcher and chaser (up until I get scared!), I can tell you that lightning strikes are VERY frequently multiple - I've seen one that I swear involved at least five strikes along the same path - but also individual strikes can be quite slow, ie tenths of a second at least. I have some video footage that shows this, and I might try to dig it up..


But right now, I'm going to sleep...

Originally posted by wmd_2008

Originally posted by earth2
Ok, here is his repsonse when I asked him how he got the picture...

"I couldn't see the waterspout until I looked at the photo. It was after dark, and the sky was dark except for the lightning. I shot about 25 shots at iso 800, f6.5 and 1/8 sec, triggering the shutter when I saw light. The lightning was very strong and was making multiple hits with each bolt, so I captured a few of them. In this photo, taken 11 minutes earlier, you can see the waterspout forming near the top of the image."

Second message: "There was so much lightning in that area that I figured there may be a tornado sort of thing going on, as tornadoes are often accompanied by very frequent lightning bolts."

Awesome Lucky Pic, I say!

[edit on 25-5-2010 by earth2]

Above is the data for the picture taken with 1/8th of a second shutter speed this is what I THINK has happened the lightning strike has registered as you can see but because of the long shutter speed an effect similar to a light trail has also been pictured due to movement of the camera during the 1/8 0f a second he was on a boat remember.

Here is a light trail of an aircraft taking off

cdn-www.airliners.net...

I agree with this explanation. I've been a professional photographer for many years now and the first thing I spotted that could have caused this is the slow shutter speed. 1/8 sec is definitely capable of creating that ghost halo around the lightning, which also seems to be following the shape of the bolt down to every little curve. At that speed if it were hand held a blur is pretty much guaranteed. Add the boat motion to that and I'm surprised there is not more of a blur!

Your friend has VERY steady hands, or was leaning against something and the lightning is still expected to be blurry. Now if he were on land and the camera were mounted to a tripod, I'd say you've got something there.

Kharron

edit: On the other hand, I see no lens blur on the electrical pole behind the lightning, so it's possible this is a natural occurrence. Unfortunately, I'm at work so I can't look into this any further

[edit on 26-5-2010 by Kharron]

reply to post by Kharron


Yes taking a close look at the picture in the OP it looked like the lightning and the so called waterspout shape matched to well thats what made me think of some motion sideways or as you say some kind of halo.

Then when I saw the 1/8th of a second shutter speed that tied in with the idea.

Originally posted by SvenTheBerserK
Looks real to me as no other blur is visible in the pic as far as i can see.
And water im sure would conduct electricity better than air.

Keep in mind that the lightning should show more blur because it is brighter (past the point of saturation) But then again, increasingly newer cameras have built in image stabilizers which do a really good job.

-rrr

reply to post by earth2

Looks to me to be just lightening. If there was ever such a thing as..."just lightening."

I think it looks real.

Most likely the lightening is expanding sort of mid explosion?!?

Navy Brat here. It's a waterspout. I've seen enough of them.

For all you jackholes that are HURF DURF IT'S INLAND IT CAN'T BE A WATERSPOUT: Have you even considered there might be MORE water behind that treeline? I like how so many of you take off the tin foil hat when people say lizard babies from Aldebaran are among us (SOUNDS LEGIT) but pick apart what is pretty much a legitimate pic... You're all total tools.

Lightning can easily follow spouts, and electrical storms are frequent when they are active. Nice pic, bro. S+F.

reply to post by fizzy1


You do know that a waterspout is a tornado over the water.In fact the article you link says this..

Waterspouts are tornadoes over water.

So I have to ask this why do you say that they are different? Waterspouts form over the water and if they reach land they become a tornado, but that rarely happens. A waterspout can be just as dangerous as a tornado,but because of where they form they are less likely to cause much property damage.

Yeah it's not a water spout...

I took a pic like that just the other day, with the double bolt of lightning...
It's really a single bolt, but because it was freehand and a slow shutter speed, that's what you get



[edit on 26-5-2010 by porschedrifter]