Lightning from Kitt Peak

Saturday night featured some impressive lightning storms in the distance as I was preparing to observe from Kitt Peak.  Most of the lightning storms were probably at least 30 miles away.  Here are a few of my favorite shots from the evening.

Here is the storm around sunset when it was south of Tucson.  You can see precipitation and there was plenty of lightning.  Lightning is hard to capture with short daytime exposures and the only bolt I got before sunset is blurred by camera motion.....  This image was taken with my 18-250mm telephoto at 18mm focal length on my Canon 70D with an exposure of 1/15 seconds at f/8, ISO 100.

These 2 shots are looking southeast past the McMath Solar Telescope with the Spacewatch 1.8-meter telescope dome at the far right.  The images were taken with my 18-250mm lens at 18mm focal length with an exposure of 15 seconds at f/5.6, ISO 1600.

This final image is looking back towards Tucson where the storm moved over the western half of the city.  This bolt is hitting near Ajo Road just right (southeast) of Cat Mountain and there is lots of rain falling left (north) of the lightning strike.  This image was taken with my 18-250mm lens at 87mm focal length and an exposure of 25 seconds at f/8, ISO 1600.