NASA's Cassini probe, which is on a mission to photograph the system in and around Saturn, sent back images of lightning, which has allowed them to put together the first movie of lightning flashing on another planet:
"After waiting years for Saturn to dim enough for the spacecraft's cameras to detect bursts of light, scientists were able to create the movie, complete with a soundtrack that features the crackle of radio waves emitted when lightning bolts struck.'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. 'Now that the radio and visible light data line up, we know for sure we are seeing powerful lightning storms.'The movie and radio data suggest extremely powerful storms with lightning that flashes as brightly as the brightest super-bolts on Earth, according to Andrew Ingersoll, a Cassini imaging science subsystem team member at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. 'What's interesting is that the storms are as powerful — or even more powerful — at Saturn as on Earth,' said Ingersoll. 'But they occur much less frequently, with usually only one happening on the planet at any given time, though it can last for months.'"
Watch the clip, AFTER THE JUMP…
