Lightning Photography

Lightning strikes on sandy soil can produce fulgurites. These root-shaped tubes of melted and fused sand grains are sometimes called petrified lightning.
High energy radiation emissions due to lightning
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.