November 19, 2012—Using one of the world's fastest cameras, a National Geographic explorer attempts the nearly impossible—photographing the birth of a lightning bolt.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Along with his son, Paul, and storm chaser Carl Young—his longtime collaborators—National Geographic explorer and storm chaser Tim Samaras died in a tornado in El Reno, Oklahoma, on May 31, 2013. He devoted his life to unlocking the mysteries of extreme weather.
How do you capture the birth of a lightning bolt?....with one of the world's fastest cameras!
I'm Lucie McNeil and this is National Geographic On Assignment---your link to thousands of Nat Geo Explorers around the globe.
Today, we're off to the American Midwest....
National Geographic's Tim Samaras is hoping to unlock the secrets of how lightning is formed, and shooting its birth may provide answers.
High speed cameras can shoot up to thousands of frames per second. But even these cameras miss the instant of a lightning bolt's creation.
Tim has one of the only cameras
in the world fast enough to capture this fleeting event. It can shoot ONE MILLION frames per second.
But at that speed, the timing has to be perfect and a lightning strike is hard to predict.
To capture that moment, Tim will need another very elusive and unpredictable thing: luck.
That's National Geographic On Assignment---your link to our Explorers.
