100 Suns

My friend Nathaniel first showed me Michael Light's 100 Suns, a collection of one hundred archival photos of nuclear test explosions. To say I'm a fan of nuclear explosions understates things, by, oh... a hundred kilotons?

So, I immediately ordered my own copy. There's a variety of shots, including fetching wide angle photographs of the mushroom clouds. I'm more of an intimate close-up sort of guy, and two images in particular stand out; The first is an ultrafast shot taken by Edgerton of the expanding fireball a very short time after detonation. The fireball is frozen in place at a diameter of 10 m or so, and the aluminum tower is still visible beneath the fireball. The protruding tower struts glowing white hot for a few feet as thermal conductance beats the tortoise like explosion. The fireball itself resembles a jellyfish at this point and is simply fascinating. The second picture that made an impression is a radiation damaged picture of troops sitting in a trench several kilometers from the explosion. At that point the predictions for the yield were imprecise, and this explosion was several times larger than they anticipated. The soldiers were much too close, as the film damage hauntingly records.

In short, highly recommended, especially for ~$20 on the gray market.