Astro-Image of the Day: big storm on Saturn

[mckitterick]

This newly released image from the Cassini mission proves that massive storms aren't just for Jupiter anymore!


Click the image to see the story.

Here we see an electrical storm that the Cassini probe has been observing for five months. Thunderstorms on Saturn appear to work much the same as such storms on Earth; however, on Saturn, the lightning bolts tearing through the cloud-tops are 10,000 times as powerful as ours.

Cool detail: Amateur astronomers have proven vital to tracking this storm: "Since Cassini's camera cannot track the storm every day, the amateur data are invaluable... [the Cassini team is] in continuous contact with astronomers from around the world, the key players being Marc Delcroix and other observers from the French Astronomical Society, Ralf Vandebergh from the Netherlands, Christopher Go from the Philippines, and Trevor Barry from Australia."

Best,
Chris

Comments

[amysisson.livejournal.com]

Sweet!

And I love the role that amateurs play and have played in astronomy and the planetary sciences.

[mckitterick.livejournal.com]

Absolutely. That's half of this story for me!

Perhaps my favorite amateur-astronomer story is about Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered Pluto in 1929. If he hadn't been such a skilled amateur, Lowell Observatory would not have offered him the job to search for Planet X. Which he found. Yes, he was on staff when he found it, but many amateurs serve in similar ways today, only now we have powerful networking technologies so they can work from home observatories or simply from their personal computers.

Cool beans. We can all make a difference.

[steve98052.livejournal.com]

I wish I had the weather, the equipment, and the skill to contribute to this. Oh, and the persistence to drag the equipment out on nights when the weather allows.

[silk-noir.livejournal.com]

Stupid climate change.

[mckitterick.livejournal.com]

Heeee.