Are these lightning leaders?

[phil b]

hi all, whilst reviewing some footage i captured of the storms over birmingham yesterday i noticed these these streaks a split second before the strike, i'm not sure if they are because the cg was least a couple of miles away

Edited July 29, 2008 by phil b

[MAF]

not sure if they are leaders Phil, but the 3rd and 5th pictures are great shots.

is the 1st and 3rd the same photo? only if they are different shots, its amazing how close the streaks are. who says lightning doesnt strike the same place twice.

[phil b]

hi mick,the photos are in order from left to right they are screen grabs from the video

[MAF]

well they are great shots.

still not sure having read up on lighting leaders whether they are or not

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Lightnings_sequence_1.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning#Leader_formation

[SnowBear]

Really difficult to tell, a leader can be miles from where the eventual discharge takes place so distance I wouldn't take any notice of.

Pic number 1 definitely is a good possibility, when you look closely it goes down behind the lamp post?/tree but is in front of the houses.

Pic number 2, if this follows 1, this is the eventual discharge strike, the leader in 1 doesnt make the connection so dies.

Pic number 5 is a normal discharge strike, landing some way away behind the distant trees.

Number 1 for me, a good possibility.

Edited July 30, 2008 by SnowBear

[Andy Bown]

I agree that Numbers 1 and 3 are leaders.

Number 5 has me a little unsure though : yes, as Snow Bear says, there's a strike landing beyond the distant trees, but look closely at the orange brick house in the foreground from the strike - is that a leader in front of it?

[opplevelse]

I disagree,

The colour makes me think these are nothing more than internal lens reflections probably from another strike out of the camera frame.

[phil b]

sorry folks just to clarify pics 2,4,5 are the discharges,

of the video, and afterwards i have broken it down scene by scene Edited July 30, 2008 by phil b

[multi cellular thunderstorm]

The first one especially looks the most likely to be a leader, I would like to say it was but having looked closely I think Wibs is right, i've seen ghosting caused on videos like that before. If you look closely on the first pic the lightning looks like it's in front of the edge of the roof, then a tiny bit of the roof emerges again to the right. I could be wrong but i'm pretty sure they're not leaders.

They are good pics though, thanks for sharing B)

[SnowBear]

Hmmm, not so sure, here is a neg of that pic, looks like its all in front of the roof but behind the tree branches further down.

[phil b]

hi wibs i'm no expert on these things but if it was ghosting would it not be there at the same time as the actual discharge, it appeared a split second before the cg and disappeared during the cg

its a bit of a mystery!!

[0000]

Hmmm, not so sure, here is a neg of that pic, looks like its all in front of the roof but behind the tree branches further down.

hmmmmm I see what you mean after viewing that pic in negative, however something appears not to be right.

Edited July 31, 2008 by hannegan

[Chris Knight]

I think you have 2 sorts of ghosts:

The ghost in img 3 is the same strike ghost as in img 5 - the big flash near the beginning of the sequence. I suspect the cameras imaging chip was saturated and overloaded in the brightest part of the first flash and it seems the video encoding and compression algorithm repeats the ghost of the flash several times.

I suspect the colour is due to borrowed information from nearby pixels, grey for sky and red from the houses.

Edited August 1, 2008 by Chris Knight