Biggest Lightning storm ever on the planet Saturn!

[danman]

Scientists are tracking the strongest lighting storm ever detected at Saturn. The storm is larger than the continental United States, with electrical activity 1,000 times stronger than the lightning on Earth.

Radio outbursts were first detected by NASA's Cassini spacecraft Jan. 23.

The storm is about 2,175 miles wide (3,500 kilometers).

"It's really the only large storm on the whole planet," said Andrew Ingersoll, a member of the Cassini imaging team.

Earth-based amateur astronomers were able view Saturn's dayside with their telescopes when Cassini could not. The amateurs' images of Saturn provided the first visual confirmation of the storm.

The storm is in a region of the southern hemisphere referred to as "storm alley" by scientists because of the high level of storm activity observed there. The latitude of the new storm matches that of the "Dragon storm," which was a powerful emitter of radio noise and was imaged by Cassini in 2004. It may be a reemergence of that storm or a new storm, scientists said.

Sunlight reflected from Saturn's rings (called "ringshine") provided illumination needed to allowing the storm and other cloud features to be seen in a new Cassini image.

NASA has produced audio files of the storm.

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/0 ... tning.html

[Terrell]

That's cool, glad those types of lightning don't rain down here on Earth. Saturn must have some really massive storms to look at too given it's almost all atmosphere and roughly 750 times the volume of Earth. Really cool topic, wish we had spacecraft orbiting Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune so we could compare each planet's storms.

[Jim Cantore]

I've seen worse on earth

not

that seems like quite a nasty storm syestem

[Aslkahuna]

Saturn is the Tropics?

Steve

[Terrell]

Saturn is the Tropics?

Steve

No though there probably are hurricanes there. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune all have extreme weather despite being so far away from Sol or maybe it's partially because of their distance from Sol, given that Neptune (according to Voyager 2's observations) actually has the fastest winds (recorded) of any planet in our Solar System. (Of course this assumes that Galileo and Cassini haven't proven otherwise)

[Aslkahuna]

I know all of that-the weather on Jupiter is largely driven by the fact that the Planet has an internal heat source which Saturn also does to a lesser extent. The other two Gas Giants weren't expected to be as active since they weren't expected to have strong internal heat sources. The windspeeds are still probably in the same ballpark as I haven't hear about Cassini finding anything stronger on Saturn and Galileo was deorbitted into Jupiter's atmosphere a while back.

Steve

[tornadochaser1986]

wow almost looks like a hurricane what a nasty storm system glad we dont have any of those here

[Terrell]

I know all of that-the weather on Jupiter is largely driven by the fact that the Planet has an internal heat source which Saturn also does to a lesser extent. The other two Gas Giants weren't expected to be as active since they weren't expected to have strong internal heat sources. The windspeeds are still probably in the same ballpark as I haven't hear about Cassini finding anything stronger on Saturn and Galileo was deorbitted into Jupiter's atmosphere a while back.

Steve

Yeah, I check out the site on Cassini periodically, I hadn't heard about anything either, but I didn't want to rule out the possibility that someone else had seen something different.

I didn't really follow the Galileo probe that much though I did watch the shows on Discovery and The Science Channel about it. I thought it was interesting that at the end of the mission they crashed Galileo into Jupiter because they feared it may crash into Europa and Contaminate it.

In addition to weather on the Gas Giants I also wonder about Titan. I wonder how long will it be before we land another probe there, perhaps something that will last longer than the Huygens probe (which wasn't designed to last long on the surface just survive a landing whether wet or dry and transmit for a little while). Would be nice to have a couple of probes, one a rover that checks out the surface the other a balloon that studies the atmosphere. Both would need atomic power and their own light sources, but no telling what we'd learn about both the surface and weather on Titan.

[Aslkahuna]

Recent article in S&T about Saturn's satellites.

Steve

[Terrell]

Recent article in S&T about Saturn's satellites.

Steve

Yeah, he sure has enough of them doesn't he, I think his current count is around 50, gotta check though that may be old already. Only Jupiter is known to have more moons than Saturn.