Connections: Terrestrial Gamma Flashes and Lightning?

  • Released Friday, February 18th, 2005
  • Updated Wednesday, May 3rd, 2023 at 1:56PM
  • ID: 3111

The RHESSI instrument not only views the Sun but can detect gamma-rays from sources on Earth as well.

Movie of TGFs detected by RHESSI over a 4 month period.

Lightning probability (January 1998 - February 2003) measured by TRMM-LIS. Brighter red is higher lightning probability.

Lightning probability (January 1998 - February 2003) measured by TRMM-LIS. Brighter red is higher lightning probability.

TGFs have some correlation with lightning events?

TGFs have some correlation with lightning events?

Four months of TGFs as seen by RHESSI.

Four months of TGFs as seen by RHESSI.

Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio

Papers

This visualization is based on the following papers:
  • Science, Vol 307, Issue 5712, 1085-1088 , 18 February 2005, [DOI: 10.1126/science.1107466]

Missions

This visualization is related to the following missions:

Series

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Datasets used in this visualization

RHESSI (Collected with the X-ray Imaging Spectrometer sensor)

The RHESSI instrument is an imaging spectrometer observing the Sun at X-ray to gamma-rays (photon energies of 3 keV to 17 MeV) at time resolutions of a few seconds. (eV stands for "electron volt" and is a unit of energy. Note that photons of visible light have energies of 2-3 eV. 1 keV is a thousand electron volts and 1 MeV is a million electron volts.

Dataset can be found at: http://hesperia.gsfc.nasa.gov/hessi/

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RHESSI
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TRMM Lightning (Collected with the LIS sensor)
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