“Astronomer is eye of the storm
http://www.smh.com.au/news/science/astronomer-is-eye-of-the-storm/2008/05/02/1209235155776.html
Richard Macey
May 3, 2008
Trevor Barry … stoked.

“ABOUT every third night Trevor Barry, a retired Broken Hill mine worker, turns his attention to the sky. What he has been seeing has delighted scientists around the world.

The amateur astronomer has been using his backyard telescope to record pictures of lightning crackling in a fierce electrical storm raging 1.4 billion kilometres away on the ringed planet Saturn.

First noticed in November by Cassini, an unmanned probe that has been circling Saturn for almost four years, the lightning bolts have been estimated to be 10,000 times more powerful than any seen in earthly storms.

To the untrained observer, what Mr Barry has recorded may look like a tiny white dot moving across the face of the planet as it rotates. But that dot is really a continuous series of lightning flashes so bright that they can be seen from Earth.

“I am imaging the lightning … from Broken Hill, 1.4 billion kilometres away,” Mr Barry said. “There must be thousands, probably hundreds of thousands every second.”

The entire storm, he added, “must be thousands of kilometres across”.

He admitted he was awestruck by the display of nature’s power being played out on another world. “I am stoked, fair dinkum.”

Mr Barry is not the only one who is impressed.

He, and fellow amateur astronomers in the Philippines, the Netherlands and France, have been sending their images to Georg Fischer, a Cassini scientist at the University of Iowa.

There, Dr Fischer’s team compare the amateur images with Cassini’s observations. “Since Cassini’s camera cannot track the storm every day, the amateur data are invaluable,” Dr Fischer said.

In 2004 and 2006 the space probe also spotted storms on Saturn that lasted about a month. “But this storm is longer-lived by far,” he said.

Although Cassini has photographed the tempest, most of its observations have involved recording the static-like noise generated by the lightning.

Dr Ulyana Dyudina, another Cassini scientist, said: “Whenever our cameras see the storm, the radio outbursts are there.”

Mr Barry has been observing the storm since February. “From night to night it can be brighter or dimmer.” But when the sky is clear and Saturn is in the right place in the sky, the storm is there. “It is the longest lived storm we know of on Saturn.”

Scientists have no idea how long the storm, whipping through a part of Saturn’s southern hemisphere now dubbed “storm alley”, will last. However they hope it will provide clues to the workings of the planet’s atmosphere.”

http://www.world-science.net/othernews/080430_saturn-storm.htm

Mega-storm continues on Saturn

April 30, 2008

Courtesy Space Science Institute and World Science staff

As a pow­er­ful elec­tri­cal storm rages on Sat­urn with light­ning 10,000 times more pow­er­ful than Earth’s, NASA’s Cas­si­ni space­craft con­tin­ues a five-month watch over the events.

The view be­low ap­prox­i­mates what the eye would see, and was cre­at­ed by com­bin­ing im­ages tak­en us­ing red, green and blue spec­tral fil­ters.

The storm stands out more clear­ly in the sharp­ened, en­hanced col­or view above.

(Cred­it: NA­SA/JPL/Space Sci­ence In­sti­tute)

Sat­urn­ian elec­tri­cal storms re­sem­ble Earth’s thun­der­storms, but much larg­er—sev­eral thou­sand kilo­me­ters or miles wide.

Thus, a tem­pest as wide as the Paris-New York dis­tance would­n’t be atyp­i­cal, though for the ringed plan­et, such a size is like a thumb­print on a beach ball.

The light­ning pro­duces ra­dio waves called Sat­urn elec­tro­stat­ic dis­charges, which Cas­si­ni first de­tected on Nov. 27.

These have “waxed and waned in in­tens­ity for five months now,” said Ge­org Fisch­er, a Cas­si­ni team mem­ber at the Uni­ver­s­ity of Io­wa.

“We saw si­m­i­lar storms in 2004 and 2006 that each lasted for nearly a month, but this storm is longer-lived by far,” he added. It rages in Sat­urn’s south­ern hem­i­sphere, in a re­gion nick­named “S­torm Al­ley” where the pre­vi­ous storms were seen.

Cas­si­ni’s ra­dio plas­ma wave in­stru­ment de­tects the storm eve­ry time it ro­tates in­to view, eve­ry 10 hours and 40 min­utes—the ap­prox­i­mate length of a Sat­urn day, Fisch­er said.

Eve­ry few sec­onds the storm gives off a ra­dio pulse last­ing for about a tenth of a sec­ond, he added, typ­i­cal of light­ning bolts and oth­er elec­tric dis­charges.

Am­a­teur as­tro­no­mers have al­so tracked the tem­pest over its five-month life­time. “S­ince Cas­si­ni’s cam­era can­not track the storm eve­ry day, the am­a­teur da­ta are in­valu­able,” said Fisch­er. “I am in con­tin­u­ous con­tact with as­tro­no­mers from around the world.”

The dis­turb­ance will likely pro­vide in­forma­t­ion on the pro­cesses pow­er­ing Sat­urn’s in­tense light­ning ac­ti­vity, Fisch­er added.

The Cas­si­ni craft is the first to ex­plore the Sat­urn sys­tem of rings and moons from or­bit. It’s part of the Cas­si­ni-Huy­gens mis­sion, a co­op­er­a­tive proj­ect of NASA, the Eu­ro­pe­an Space Agen­cy and the Ital­ian Space Agen­cy.

• * *

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/05/02/2233686.htm

“Outback stargazer helping NASA

Posted Fri May 2, 2008 12:42pm AEST

* Map: Broken Hill 2880

An amateur astronomer from far western New South Wales is providing NASA with information about a storm on Saturn.

Trevor Barry from Broken Hill says he first noticed the storm in February, when he was photographing the planet on a webcam.

He has been sending pictures of the storm to scientists from the University of Iowa.

The images ended up with NASA, which had been tracking the storm since November last year with equipment aboard the Cassini spacecraft.

But Mr Barry says NASA still has to rely on pictures and data supplied by four amateurs around the world, including him.

“They have an instrument on the Cassini spacecraft and it picks up electrostatic discharge lightning in the atmosphere, but they couldn’t image it,” he said.

“The cameras on Cassini were only looking at this area at the end of December, so although they can hear the discharges from the lightning, they can’t see it.

“It’s just quite a buzz to have professionals at the pointy end of their field acknowledging us amateurs and actually using our data … it gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling.”

Tags: planets-and-asteroids, broken-hill-2880

http://www.smh.com.au/news/science/astronomer-is-eye-of-the-storm/2008/05/02/1209235155776.html

Astronomer is eye of the storm

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Richard Macey
May 3, 2008
Trevor Barry … stoked.

Trevor Barry … stoked.
Advertisement

ABOUT every third night Trevor Barry, a retired Broken Hill mine worker, turns his attention to the sky. What he has been seeing has delighted scientists around the world.

The amateur astronomer has been using his backyard telescope to record pictures of lightning crackling in a fierce electrical storm raging 1.4 billion kilometres away on the ringed planet Saturn.

First noticed in November by Cassini, an unmanned probe that has been circling Saturn for almost four years, the lightning bolts have been estimated to be 10,000 times more powerful than any seen in earthly storms.

To the untrained observer, what Mr Barry has recorded may look like a tiny white dot moving across the face of the planet as it rotates. But that dot is really a continuous series of lightning flashes so bright that they can be seen from Earth.

“I am imaging the lightning … from Broken Hill, 1.4 billion kilometres away,” Mr Barry said. “There must be thousands, probably hundreds of thousands every second.”

The entire storm, he added, “must be thousands of kilometres across”.

He admitted he was awestruck by the display of nature’s power being played out on another world. “I am stoked, fair dinkum.”

Mr Barry is not the only one who is impressed.

He, and fellow amateur astronomers in the Philippines, the Netherlands and France, have been sending their images to Georg Fischer, a Cassini scientist at the University of Iowa.

There, Dr Fischer’s team compare the amateur images with Cassini’s observations. “Since Cassini’s camera cannot track the storm every day, the amateur data are invaluable,” Dr Fischer said.

In 2004 and 2006 the space probe also spotted storms on Saturn that lasted about a month. “But this storm is longer-lived by far,” he said.

Although Cassini has photographed the tempest, most of its observations have involved recording the static-like noise generated by the lightning.

Dr Ulyana Dyudina, another Cassini scientist, said: “Whenever our cameras see the storm, the radio outbursts are there.”

Mr Barry has been observing the storm since February. “From night to night it can be brighter or dimmer.” But when the sky is clear and Saturn is in the right place in the sky, the storm is there. “It is the longest lived storm we know of on Saturn.”

Scientists have no idea how long the storm, whipping through a part of Saturn’s southern hemisphere now dubbed “storm alley”, will last. However they hope it will provide clues to the workings of the planet’s atmosphere.