Rasha Abbasi awarded NSF grant for research on the Microphysics of Lightning.

Dr. Rasha Abbasi has been awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation to support her research for three years, starting in Fall 2021. The NSF proposal submitted in December "The Microphysics of Lightening: Observing the Optical Emission from Downward Terrestrial Gamma-ray Flashes" AGS-2112709 has been accepted for funding for $505,230 for 36 months.

The objective of the project is to purchase and operate a 40,000 fps video camera at the Telescope Array, in order to record the optical component of the lightning responsible for the Telescope Array downward Terrestrial Gamma-ray Flashes. It is a significant step forward for continued lightning studies at the Telescope Array, and will result in some very cool videos. See e.g. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snKm-MmpGoc

which was shot with the same camera model.