Spectacular and interesting from a scientific point of view. They are images of lightning and lightning rods in Brazil that are going around the world. On the one hand, on February 10, the photographer Fernando Braga captured the precise moment in which lightning struck the head of Christ the Redeemer (or Cristo del Corcovado) in Rio de Janeiro (on one of the lightning rod points of the top of this statue, to be more exact).
In parallel, the cover of the December 2022 issue of the scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters highlighted the image of a group of lightning strikes in São José dos Campos, interacting with the lightning rods of the tallest buildings.
The “divine lightning”, as the author of the snapshot has baptized it, struck at 6:55 p.m. (local time) in the middle of a strong storm and was captured in a three-hour photographic work session, in which Fernando Braga made about 500 long exposure images. The author has assured that the snapshot was captured with a Nikon D800 camera and is not retouched.
Truly, the photography is spectacular and now occupies a place in the history of curiosities of this iconic statue inaugurated in 1931. However, as seems obvious, it is not the first time that a great electric discharge has visited this 38-meter-high construction, not the first photograph of this type. In January 2014, for example, lightning struck the middle finger of the right hand of this figure of Jesus Christ, causing minor material damage.
In the most recent case, there is no data that divine lightning caused damage to the figure. The experts recall, in this case, that the sculpture is equipped with a network of lightning rod points that minimizes the effects of electrical storms and their discharges; although it is not always completely safe, as in the case of the mutilated finger in 2014.
The images of the other recent Brazilian lightning strikes, those that struck São José dos Campos, have been the subject of a relatively important scientific study. Particularly noteworthy in this case are the details obtained with high-speed cameras in which the interaction between the electrical charges of lightning and the lightning rods can be seen.
The main authors of the study are physicist Marcelo Saba, a researcher at the National Institute for Space Research (INPE) of Brazil, and Diego Ramón R. da Silva, a doctoral student at the same national institute.
In the highlighted image (above) two branches of lightning descending and ascending electrical charges from the lightning rods of the nearest tall buildings are observed (emission of the ascending leader, in technical terms).
“The image was captured on a summer afternoon in São José dos Campos [in the state of São Paulo] while negatively charged lightning was approaching the ground at 370 km per second. When it was a few dozen meters above ground level, lightning rods and tall objects on top of nearby buildings produced positive discharges upwards, competing to connect with lightning downwards. The final image prior to the connection was obtained 25 million seconds before the lightning struck one of the buildings”, explained Marcelo Saba in statements published by the Fadesp agency.
The authors of this research highlight that the high-speed video, captured at a moment very close to the lightning strike of a building, “reveals novel details regarding the dynamics of the streamer zone or lightning rod tracers,” they explain. researchers in the abstract of their article. Upward leaders (electrical charges) propagate steadily and without ramifications, displaying a uniform luminous corona.
