Lightning Photography

The production of X-rays by a bolt of lightning was theoretically predicted as early as 1925 but no evidence was found until 2001/2002, when researchers at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology detected X-ray emissions from an induced lightning strike along a wire trailed behind a rocket shot into a storm cloud. In the same year University of Florida and Florida Tech researchers used an array of electric field and X-ray detectors at a lightning research facility in North Florida to confirm that natural lightning makes X-rays in large quantities. The cause of the X-ray emissions is still a matter for research, as the temperature of lightning is too low to account for the X-rays observed.
A number of observations by space-based telescopes have revealed even higher energy gamma ray emissions, and new challenges are posed to current theories of lightning formation by the recent discovery of antimatter positron signatures in these types of emissions.