MODICA – Titled “Lightning Storm over the Mediterranean,” it captures an intense thunderstorm cell as it unleashes a shower of lightning in the stretch of sea off the Hyblaean coast, and is the photo by filmmaker Alessia Scarso that USRA chose as its Earth image of the day on November 27, 2020.
Jim Foster, scientific researcher and curator of EPOD’s outreach service, explains that the spectacular effect comes not only from the “cloud to ground lightning”, the lightning that strikes the sea, but also from the “cloud to cloud”, or those that pierce the clouds reveal the storm in the sky.
Alessia Scarso, member of the well-known group of astrophotographers Pictores Caeli, comments on yet another prestigious publication: “The Nature that manifests itself with power in this case shows its fascinating face. On September 14, in Maganuco, I took this composition of 17 photos while listening to the finale of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture. It was the perfect end of summer, in the year that the end-of-season fireworks ritual was not held. Someone interpreted it as a symbolic photo of this difficult 2020. Then again, you can’t say it’s not a stormy year. I like to observe that aspect of the natural elements that takes me away from the human dimension, and somehow comforts me and puts me more balanced in the cycle of existence. We all need that in these times.”
The Earth Picture of the Day (EPOD) is a science outreach service curated by NASA’s Earth Science Division and the EOS Project Science Office at Goddard Space Flight Center, in collaboration with the Universities Space Research Association (USRA) consortium, and publishes an evocative annotated image related to Earth science each day.
The picture on the USRA website is published at this link