NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Steve Roy
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala.
(Phone: 256.544.0034)

News release: 06-112


A map created in 2000 by scientists at the National Space Science and Technology Center (NSSTC) in Huntsville, Ala., offers an animated glimpse at global lightning data. Each frame represents the average lightning activity on a single day of the year; color variations represent the average annual number of lightning flashes per square kilometer. Such information has been captured for more than a decade by two NASA space instruments, the Optical Transient Detector and Lightning Imaging Sensor. Both were built and managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, a partner in the NSSTC. In September 2006, researchers at Marshall and the NSSTC completed the collation of all global lightning information from the 11-year research activity, making it available for the first time to members of the international science community for new research. (NASA/National Space Science and Technology Center)

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