Feb 14 2006
From The Space Library
Scientists led by University of Iowa professor Donald A. Gurnett, Principal Investigator for the Radio and Plasma Wave Science Investigation, announced that, since 23 January 2006, the team had been using instruments aboard NASA’s Cassini spacecraft to track a lightning storm on Saturn. Cassini had detected radio emissions from the lightning but, at first, had been unable to image the storm because of the storm’s position on the night side of the planet. Amateur astronomers had succeeded in capturing the first images of the storm, and Cassini had acquired subsequent images. Gurnett described the storm as larger than the continental United States, with lightning bolts over 1,000 times the strength of conventional lightning, the strongest lightening that his team had observed since Cassini entered Saturn’s orbit in 2006.
University of Iowa News Services, “UI Researchers, Colleagues Find Giant Lightning Storm at Saturn,” news release, 14 February 2006, http://news-releases.uiowa.edu/2006/February/releases.uiowa.edu/2006/february/021406saturn_lightning.html, (accessed 13 August 2010).
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