Rain and Lightning on Kitt Peak

I was up at Kitt Peak Friday night with our Project Astro teachers and the weather wasn't totally cooperative. However, I grabbed my camera to get some shots.

My first shot is from the visitor's gallery of the Mayall Four Meter Telescope. The Sun is getting low in the sky and filtering through the clouds. Okay, I took this shot just because it reminded me of the appearance of God in Monty Python's The Holy Grail. For the record, God did not appear in the clouds and give us a quest that evening.

Rain moved in and we had a nice thunderstorm. The storms moved out and I went outside and tried for some lightning shots. The storms were generally farther away when I took these and the nearly full Moon was breaking through the clouds helping light up the landscape. That is the McMath-Pierce Solar Telescope in these shots. The storm was far enough away I wasn't worried about being struck!

Reprinted with permission from the Half-Astrophysicist Blog.