As a powerful electrical storm rages on Saturn with lightning bolts 10,000 times stronger than lightning on Earth, the spacecraft Cassini will continue its 5-month wake of the dramatic events.
Scientists with NASA's Cassini-Huygens mission has been tracking the light visibly, lightning storm generation - the longest continuously monitored electrical storm always monitored by Cassini.
Saturn electrical storms resemble terrestrial thunderstorms, but in a much larger scale. Storms on Saturn have a diameter of thousands of kilometers (several thousand kilometers) and radio signals generated by their flashes are thousands of times more powerful than that of terrestrial thunderstorms.
Lightning flashes in the storm continued producing radio waves called Saturn electrostatic discharge, the radio and plasma wave science instrument on 27 first November 2007. Cassini's imaging cameras to monitor the location and appearance of the storm, first spotting it about a week later, on 6 December.
"The electrostatic radio outbursts and waxed to have lost intensity for a period of five months," said Georg Fischer, an employee at the radio and plasma wave science team at the University of Iowa, Iowa City. "We have similar storms in the years 2004 and 2006 that each lasted almost a month, but the storm is more far-lived. And it appeared after nearly two years in which we do not recognize storm electrical activity of Saturn."
The new storm is located in Saturn's southern hemisphere - in a region the nickname "Storm Alley" mission scientists - where the earlier storm were observed by Cassini.
"To see the storm, the imaging cameras to find the right place at the right time, and whenever our cameras can be found in the storm, the radio there are outbreaks," said Ulyana Dyudina, an ally of the Cassini Imaging Team at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
Cassini's Radio plasma wave instrument recognizes the storm every time he turns in prospect, which happens every 10 hours and 40 minutes, the approximate length of a Saturn day. Every few seconds, the storm is a radio pulse lasting for about one tenth of a second, which is typical of lightning bolts and other electrical discharges. These radio waves are detected, even if the storm on the horizon as seen from Cassini, a result of diffraction of radio waves through the atmosphere of the planet.
Amateur astronomers have kept track of the storm over his 5-month term. "As Cassini's camera can not track the storm every day, the amateur data is invaluable," said Fischer. "I am in constant contact with astronomers from all over the world, the most important actors is Marc Delcroix and other observers from the French Astronomical Society, Ralf Vande Bergh from the Netherlands, Christopher Go of the Philippines and Trevor Barry of Australia."
The storm will probably durable provision of information on the processes of power-intensive Saturn bolts. Cassini scientists will continue to monitor Storm Alley as the seasons change, so the beginning of autumn in the southern hemisphere of the planet.
Scientists with NASA's Cassini-Huygens mission has been tracking the light visibly, lightning storm generation - the longest continuously monitored electrical storm always monitored by Cassini.
Saturn electrical storms resemble terrestrial thunderstorms, but in a much larger scale. Storms on Saturn have a diameter of thousands of kilometers (several thousand kilometers) and radio signals generated by their flashes are thousands of times more powerful than that of terrestrial thunderstorms.
Lightning flashes in the storm continued producing radio waves called Saturn electrostatic discharge, the radio and plasma wave science instrument on 27 first November 2007. Cassini's imaging cameras to monitor the location and appearance of the storm, first spotting it about a week later, on 6 December.
"The electrostatic radio outbursts and waxed to have lost intensity for a period of five months," said Georg Fischer, an employee at the radio and plasma wave science team at the University of Iowa, Iowa City. "We have similar storms in the years 2004 and 2006 that each lasted almost a month, but the storm is more far-lived. And it appeared after nearly two years in which we do not recognize storm electrical activity of Saturn."
The new storm is located in Saturn's southern hemisphere - in a region the nickname "Storm Alley" mission scientists - where the earlier storm were observed by Cassini.
"To see the storm, the imaging cameras to find the right place at the right time, and whenever our cameras can be found in the storm, the radio there are outbreaks," said Ulyana Dyudina, an ally of the Cassini Imaging Team at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
Cassini's Radio plasma wave instrument recognizes the storm every time he turns in prospect, which happens every 10 hours and 40 minutes, the approximate length of a Saturn day. Every few seconds, the storm is a radio pulse lasting for about one tenth of a second, which is typical of lightning bolts and other electrical discharges. These radio waves are detected, even if the storm on the horizon as seen from Cassini, a result of diffraction of radio waves through the atmosphere of the planet.
Amateur astronomers have kept track of the storm over his 5-month term. "As Cassini's camera can not track the storm every day, the amateur data is invaluable," said Fischer. "I am in constant contact with astronomers from all over the world, the most important actors is Marc Delcroix and other observers from the French Astronomical Society, Ralf Vande Bergh from the Netherlands, Christopher Go of the Philippines and Trevor Barry of Australia."
The storm will probably durable provision of information on the processes of power-intensive Saturn bolts. Cassini scientists will continue to monitor Storm Alley as the seasons change, so the beginning of autumn in the southern hemisphere of the planet.
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