Green Lightning???

[brobertson]

A friend of mine has captured some great lightning shots but in some of his pictures there are green lightning artifacts, or "ghost" strikes while all the rest of his pictures were quite normal. The entire group of pictures were taken within a two or three hour period during a rather normal monsoon storm in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

We were wondering if someone can help us figure out whether there is such a thing as green lightning phenomena, or is it a problem with his camera like a lens flare, or something else. He is using a Canon Rebel XTi with standard Canon lenses.

Thanks for any help you can provide.

Sincerely,
Bill Robertson

Here are links to the pictures:

http://www.pbase.com/brobertson/image/84425900

http://www.pbase.com/brobertson/image/84425902

http://www.pbase.com/brobertson/image/84425904

http://www.pbase.com/brobertson/image/84425906

 

[Dan Robinson]

These are lens reflections, usually caused by a UV filter (or any other additional layer of glass, such as a window) on the lens. If you look at all of the ghost lightning channels, their shape matches one of the main lightning channels on the same image. In this case the channels are inverted (upside down) matches of the true lightning.

 

[Jayson Prentice]

Definitely looks like ghost images thanks to the lens flare, like Dan said, if you have some sort of filter on the lens that might be the culprit.

 

[Willie Dines]

I'm glad that you guys had confirmed what I had though also this morning, when I looked at the photos

I am aware that on rare occasions, some lightning bolts are apparently a greenish color, but I've never seen any photo's prove/disprove this, I think that it was mentioned on wikipedia or something, when I was looking to find out about the various colors of lightning, that are known to be seen

The only colors of lightning that I have seen in my lifetime are Blue, pink, red, and blue, but I believe this is more dependant on where the lightning strike is, in co-ordination to the amount of rainfall between the observer and the lightning bolt itself

Willie

 

[Dave Gallaher]

Driving north from Fort Lauderdale in 1979, accompanying the brush by Hurricane David, greenish lightning was very evident. I'm not sure what the terminology is for cc lightning that seems to fall apart and leave descending 'blobs' (particulate?), but this was what we saw on the Sunshine Parkway near West Palm Beach in latitude. I remember it well because rain had blown into our truck's intake and stalled the engine, leaving us stranded on the roadside for a very nervous half-hour.

 

[Dan Robinson]

Lightning emits light with a visible spectrum similar to sunlight, or white light. Impurities in the atmosphere can shift the perceived color the same way it does during a sunset, depending on the distance to the observer.

Just like a sunset is never green, lightning is never green in color. Greenish or turquoise colors are always the result of power flashes from arcing lines, which in many cases are intense enough to match the brightness of lightning. Lighting often triggers power flashes (flashovers) if it hits energized lines, which can cause both to occur together.

 

[cdcollura]

Good day,

I think the effect of "green coloring" hail in the storm can affect lightning color.

Hail often causes a green hue to sunlight due to its effect on filtering light. A lightning bolt can have similar effects if hail is present.

 

[Greg Campbell]

A friend of mine has captured some great lightning shots but in some of his pictures there are green lightning artifacts, or "ghost" strikes while all the rest of his pictures were quite normal. The entire group of pictures were taken within a two or three hour period during a rather normal monsoon storm in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

We were wondering if someone can help us figure out whether there is such a thing as green lightning phenomena, or is it a problem with his camera like a lens flare, or something else. He is using a Canon Rebel XTi with standard Canon lenses.

Thanks for any help you can provide.

Sincerely,
Bill Robertson

Here are links to the pictures:

It's just lens flare.

The ghost lightning in this one is clearly mirror symetric to the middle and rightmost main bolts.

http://www.pbase.com/brobertson/image/84425904

-Greg

 

[Paul Austin]

Just like a sunset is never green, lightning is never green in color. Greenish or turquoise colors are always the result of power flashes from arcing lines, which in many cases are intense enough to match the brightness of lightning. Lighting often triggers power flashes (flashovers) if it hits energized lines, which can cause both to occur together.

I'm sure you are referring to the lightning channel itself, as the original post is directed, and this I would agree with. But as Chris suggested, lightning flashing through hail / heavy precip can often take on a greenish hue, especially if it originates from a relatively high position in the storm. It's not entirely uncommon, just as sunlight passing through such precip shafts often appears greenish. It depends on the precip and the angle of the light passage. This is clearly not the case with these photos, however. Yeah, lens flare / filter artifacts.

 

[Susan Strom]

I see green lightning a couple times per year in Arizona. It seems to occur when the monsoon flow is influenced by increased moisture from broken up tropical systems coming up from Mexico. Usually the green color is very pronounced, but more of a teal, and the green lightning is almost always intracloud.

 

[joel ewing]

I'm in southeast Arizona, and have witnessed green lightning many, many times. Not the bolt itself, but it usually occurs when there is a bolt that just "sticks" to the ground for an abnormally long period of time. This phenomena will not just occur with only one or two strikes, but occurs often times for 15-30 minutes. And this is not from lightning striking a transformer every single time. From a distance it can look like the ground will glow green for a second or two....then the color green will appear all around the bottom of the bolt....as if a green grenade were to have gone off. It's incredible to see, and it's been explained in the Tucson paper as having something to do with some fleeting change in the atmosphere near the storms that produce this phenomena.
Sometimes this is so pronounced, this green glowing effect, that people from all over town will be talking about it the next day.
One thing is for sure whenever I've witnessed this....the lightning sticks to the ground for an unusually long time compared to normal, and the green glow will be much much bigger than just the bolt itself. The glowing area can be as big as a football field or larger, and seemingly be as tall as several hundred feet.
It is nothing at all like the little green lightning wisps that are shown in the photos connected with this post.

 

[Susan Strom]

Those are something, those transformer explosions. I've been close to one; 1/4 mile or less, with sparks flying. I get up on the mountains too and can see them blow up in the desert below. They come in red too.

The green lightning I'm referring to is actually just lightning-sheet lightning-that stays in the clouds, IC rather than CG. It seems to come with the broken up tropical systems. I do not know why it is green (teal).

 

[cdcollura]

Good day all,

Besides in hailstorms, lightning can be colored green by the interaction of the light, which contains white light but shifted blue a bit, and ice / water suspended in the air (clouds and precipitation).

Tropical cyclones, with lots and lots of clouds, precipitation, and cloud-cloud lightning, have the erriest of green lightning. The color is lavender to emerald-turguoise greein in color. They are not power flashes (I saw the lightning over the ocean), but eyewall lightning / in the thick cloud shield around the storm.

Another thing could be the "yellowing" effect caused by lightning filtering through dust in the air great distances. Under the right conditions, this can also appear greenish in tint.

Finally, power flashes can be any variety of colors. The coloring is not caused by the lightning itself, but the transformers / wires and metals they contain giving off light when ignited / ionized. When ionized / sparking ... Copper is green, aluminum is blue-white, steel cable is yellow / orange, cobalt is deep-blue. Fireworks also use some of these metals to "color" the explosions.

 

[brobertson]

Thanks for the help on this matter. I had not heard about green lightning before my friend asked about it and showed me his pictures. My friend has been monitoring these replies and thanks all of you for the interesting and helpful replies. He said that Dan Robinson and a couple others hit the nail on the head because he shot these pictures with a UV filter on the lens. So it appears, in this particular case, the issue is related to equipment and not a natural phenomena.

Thanks again for your help on this, I sure have learned a lot about green lightning,
Bill

 

[Willie Dines]

I have learned quite a bit myself, as I had been aware that green was a known color of lightning, but wasn't quite sure if it had been witnessed by many , and I have a feeling that there's quite a few others that will have learned something from this thread too

Willie