Lightning Daguerreotypes?

[polyglot]

Article here . Is this a real and acknowledged photographic phenomenon, or a bunch of hicks with hyperactive imaginations?

If they're real, what is acting as the lens? What is the physical mechanism causing the photo- (or electro-) sensitivity?

 

[AgX]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lichtenberg_figure

see at article under "Natural occurrences"

 

[AgX]

Also the entry or exit marks at lightning struck people and the related necrosis could be seen imagewise.

 

[polyglot]

Nah, I'm not referring to the Lichtenberg figures (fractal burn marks), though there were clearly a couple of them tossed into the article to confuse matters. The article talks about a number of instances where the likeness of a person was imaged onto window-glass by a nearby lightning strike when they were looking out the window. I'm wondering if that phenomenon could be real, and if so, how. I can imagine impurities in the glass making it sensitive to various things like the massive electron and photon (UV mostly I think) fluxes surrounding a lightning strike, and certainly those can illuminate a person's face at extreme intensity, but what the hell could focus the image?

The broad pattern of independent reports doesn't look like a mass hysteria (there isn't the communication necessary between locations necessary for that), though in a couple of cases you can see strings of copycat reports occurring after an initial report in some locations.

 

[pdeeh]

Aren't we in Jesus-on-a-pizza territory here ?

 

[polyglot]

Aren't we in Jesus-on-a-pizza territory here ?

Quite possibly.

 

[AgX]

I can imagine impurities in the glass making it sensitive to various things like the massive electron and photon (UV mostly I think) fluxes surrounding a lightning strike, and certainly those can illuminate a person's face at extreme intensity, but what the hell could focus the image?

Basically, if enough energy is brought into glass it can turn into a solid by crystallization with the related optical effects. This is even used for imaging. But I see no way for unintentional imaging.

 

[removed account4]

seems like kirilan photography.

 

[AgX]

No. Kirlian photography is a masking type of imaging.

 

[Two23]

All of these examples seem to come from the 19th century. Maybe even lightning has now "gone digital" and can't do it anymore?


Kent in SD

 

[Truzi]

I think part of it is "expectation" or imagination... like seeing familiar objects in clouds. I've not really looked into it, though.

 

[pentaxuser]

The "frightened man". Sounds like a case for Sherlock. Funny how such a phenomenon always strikes somewhere famous/notorious or otherwise having historical provenance. How will dare spend a night alone in Tussaud's "Chamber of Horrors?" This has a ring to it. No good asking anyone to dare spend a night alone in my darkroom despite there being much more in the way of recorded horrors there .

There is for instance never any recordings of a face of a frightened man in the window of the Gent's toilets in say downtown Basingstoke. Far too prosaic.

Even lightning reads the right books

pentaxuser