ESA’s satellite highlights the beauty of lightning across Europe: watch the video

It’s not an everyday occurrence to see animated sequences of lightning bolts pulled from Earth’s atmosphere. Thanks to space research organizations around the world, such exquisite views are now available on the Internet. Recently, the European Space Agency (ESA) released stunning animated visuals based on data from its groundbreaking Meteosat Third Generation satellite. These scenes show the breathtaking movements of lightning across Europe. The satellite is capable of continuously detecting lightning activity over parts of Europe, Africa, the Middle East and South America. It achieves this by detecting light pulses generated by cloud-to-ground, cloud-to-cloud and intra-cloud lightning flashes.

As noted by ESA, lightning images help monitor more than 80 percent of Earth’s surface for lightning discharges. This enables the detection of severe storms and potential extreme weather events in their early stages. This satellite is the first of a total of six satellites that form the complete MTG (Meteosat Third Generation-Imager) system.

In the video, a sequence of images of lightning bolts can be seen. These were created by collecting one minute of power measurements.

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Watch:

We can’t hear thunder from space…
But we do see bolts of lightning!

#MTGI1 The Lightning Imager continuously monitors over 80% of the disk for lightning discharges and will allow severe storms to be detected in their early stages.

, pic.twitter.com/662MiABwdU– ESA Earth Observation (@ESA_EO) 3 July 2023

According to a BBC report, the Lightning Imager can detect flashes of lightning in Earth’s atmosphere from a distance of 36,000 kilometers with its four cameras mounted over parts of Europe, Africa, the Middle East and South America. Each camera can capture 1,000 images per second and can also observe continuous lightning activity from space. Apart from weather forecasting and predictions of possible storms, the imager can also play a major role in ensuring air traffic safety.

Speaking on the same, Eumetsat Director General Phil Evans described the capture as “fantastic”, further adding that such instruments have been around the world for several years now.

“The Americans have had a device like this in their part of the world for the past few years, but this is a first for Europe and Africa. Our imager is more sophisticated in terms of resolution and performance, so there is a lot of excitement about how its imagery can be used,” he said.