Taken 1979 at Telecom Research Laboratories, Clayton, Melbourne.

More on Ben Everett's photo here.

Note : Reproduction rights for publication of Ben Everett's Ball Lightning photo may now be obtained from Ern Mainka Photography.

The number of known Ball Lightning photographs taken is difficult to determine. Many purported photos could be explained by such things as camera movement and traces by AC streetlights. Most of the possible candidate Ball Lightning photos appear in Mark Stenhoff's book with accompanying notes on scientific studies of them. Nearly all are give other possible explanations. Two photographs however appear to be probable Ball Lightning, those being Werner Burger 1978 and Ben Everett 1979.

Brett Porter's 1987 photograph is also believed to be Ball Lightning.

Some so called 'UFO' photos of luminous objects might be images of Ball Lightning or a similar kind of plasma phenomena.

The number known genuine Ball Lightning 'still camera photographs' is only a handfull, but there may be many more.

Burger 1978. (photo - Fortean Picture Library)

Everett 1979. (photo)

Porter 1987.. (photo - New Scientist)

Mainka 2002. (photo - BL Gallery 1)

There are reported to be photographs (published) of multiple Ball Lightning hovering in rings above a volcano but I have not been able to locate the book/paper/journal.

Photograph taken by Alfonso Reyes, 19th Dec. 2000.

This photo appears extensively on many 'UFO' websites and elsewhere on the web.

The photograph was taken Tuesday to 6:10 hours after one of the most intense explosions in the volcano during the last days. Steve Aron, of the Astronomical Society of the United States, said after observing the image "what appears in the photo is not a UFO". Aron said that "It could be a power plant expelled by the volcano, like incandescent matter or steam ignited by some reason ".

MUFON....'Francisco Trujillo of NTX Mexican News agency contacted me to determine MUFON's opinion of a photograph taken on Tuesday, December 19, 2000, by a professional photographer Alfonso Reyes of Notimex. He has taken a remarkable photograph of a brightly lit object.... He was capturing the awakening and explosive eruption of the volcano that is seen in the background..... He claims he did not see the object while taking the shot at 6:10 AM. The object was observed after the picture was developed. The photograph is a 20 second time exposure taken with a 24 MM lens. The time exposure accounts for the streak that reveals the objects trajectory that appears to descend towards the volcano. It is difficult to discern if the object is moving toward or away from the camera. Popocatepetl means " Smoking Mountain" and the volcano started new eruptions the previous day'....

'.....The object may be the result of Earth Lights; volcanic related earthquakes, pyro plastic flows, or plasmas caused by tectonic earth stresses. Many UFOs have been seen and photographed in the area in the past. For example, on June 29, 1999, the surveillance camera of the CENAPRED, the goverment agency for disasters prevention was monitoring Popocatepetl taking time lapse photos at intervals. A disk shaped dark object was photographed near the volcano crater at 1:20 PM It emerged from the smoke clouds. Other photos and video of UFOs have been seen. Vocanologists have been concerned that the volcano may explode, but shortly after the photo was taken the volcano mysteriously stopped its eruptions'.

' Tompkins and Rodney (1975, 1976, 1977, 1980) reported two probable ball lightning events recorded by the Prarie Meteorite Network in the United States, one of which was close enough to be analyzed in detail. The network consisted of 16 stations that photographed the night sky in seven mid western states every night over a ten year period. Tompkins and Rodney searched about 12,000 photographic records of the network for ball and bead lightning. The cameras used a 13 1/3 Hz chopping shutter, closed fo approxiamately two-thirds of the cycle...... In the cases found, the ball appeared to have left the lightning channel well above the tip of the stroke at angles from the vertical of 20 and 30 degrees. In the photograph studied in detail, the series of images produced was consistent with a ball of a diameter of 2 to 4 metres falling at about 62 ms and drifting with the wind as it fell '.

(from Mark Stenhoff's book 'Ball Lightning..')

' During a thunderstorm on the evening of November 12, 1976 in the Transvaal Highfield region of South Africa, an image was recorded by an automated videotape recording system used to study conventional lightning. The image appeared detached and round and was seen in the vicinity of a branch in the main channel of a CG lightning flash that consisted of a series of four return strokes, the decay of the last of which was unusually tortuous. The round image appeared to become brighter in the intervals between strokes. Its altitude was estimated as 300 m and its diameter as 5m, although the latter estimate was rendered uncertain by image blooming.'

(from Mark Stenhoff's book 'Ball Lightning..')

Earthlight type ALP (perhaps related to Ball Lightning) have also been video taped in Norway, Turkey and Australia.