Gallery: Cassini sees lightning on Saturn
Image 1 of 3
NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has captured images of lightning from a storm that raged on Saturn from January to October 2009. The images enabled scientists to make a video of the lightning that also features radio transmissions of the crackling of the bolts.
“This is the first time we have the visible lightning flash together with the radio data,” said Georg Fischer, a radio and plasma wave science team associate based at the Space Research Institute in Graz, Austria.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI
Scientists had to wait for years for the planet to be dim enough for the Cassini spacecraft to capture the lightning.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI
The view of these 3 images was acquired at a distance of approximately 2.1 million kilometers (1.3 million miles) from Saturn – with a scale of 24 kilometers (15 miles) per pixel.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI
