Worldwide, lightning strikes around 50 times every second (more than 4 million times every day). Electrical imbalances generated by turbulent skies are suddenly balanced by a spectacular discharge tracing across a darkened sky -- a display that is both frightening and awe-inspiring. Collected below are recent images of lightning around the world, including a rare image of an upper atmosphere "red sprite" flash captured by NASA astronauts aboard the International Space Station.
Lightning Strikes
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Storm chaser photographer Mike Meadows is silhouetted as lightning strikes outside Lake Havasu City, Arizona as monsoon moisture continues to invade the Mojave deserts area, on July 30, 2012. #
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An elusive "red sprite" flash, photographed by Expedition 31 astronauts aboard the International Space Station on April 30, 2012. The sprite (upper right) appears high above a lightning strike (bright spot in the clouds). Red sprites only last for a few milliseconds, sending pulses of electrical energy up toward the edge of space--the electrically charged layer known as the ionosphere--instead of down to Earth's surface. More about this image on NASA's Earth Observatory. #
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A lightning bolt flashes above Independence Square near the landmark Palacio Salvo, in Montevideo, Uruguay, as a storm passes over the capital early on February 28, 2012. #
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Lightning illuminates the sky above Donbass Arena during the Group D Euro 2012 soccer match Ukraine vs France in Donetsk, Ukraine, on June 15, 2012. The game was suspended due to heavy rain and thunder storm. #
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Viewed from low Earth orbit, lightning illuminates a cloud from within, above Oklahoma, on April 11, 2012. Photo taken by astronauts aboard the International Space Station, some 250 miles above the clouds. #
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Lightning, during a storm above the Memorial Center in Potocari the night before a mass burial, near Srebrenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina, on July 10, 2012. The bodies of 520 recently identified victims of the Srebrenica massacre were buried on July 11, the anniversary of the massacre when Bosnian Serb forces commanded by Ratko Mladic slaughtered 8,000 Muslim men and boys and buried them in mass graves, in Europe's worst massacre since World War Two. #
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Lightning strikes Lake Michigan, seen from Streeterville, north of downtown Chicago. Original here. #
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A soldier from the U.S. Army's Alpha Company, 1-12 Infantry, 4th Brigade, 4th Infantry Division, mans a weapon during a lightning storm at Combat Outpost Pirtle-King in Afghanistan's Kunar Province, on June 8, 2012. #
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