Saturn's electrostatic discharges revisited

Details Saturn's electrostatic discharges revisited Saturn's electrostatic discharges revisited

Apr 2003

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2003eaeja.....1905k&link_type=abstract

EGS - AGU - EUG Joint Assembly, Abstracts from the meeting held in Nice, France, 6 - 11 April 2003, abstract #1905

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

During the two Voyager flybys of Saturn in 1980 and 1981, unusual bursty broadband emissions dubbed Saturn Electrostatic Discharges or SED were detected covering the radio spectrum from ~100 kHz to 40 MHz. Although originally believed to be related to the Saturn ring spokes, ephemeris and spectral considerations showed that these bursts must have originated in the Saturnian atmosphere near the equator. This led researchers to propose that the emissions were "sferics" from enormous lightning-like discharges. Even the weakest of these bursts were more powerful than terrestrial super bolts. The most powerful of these bursts would have been about 10-20 Jansky at Earth, but attempts to detect these bursts at 300 MHz with VLA in the mid-1980s were unsuccessful. In 2004, the Cassini spacecraft will enter orbit around Saturn, and one of the major goals of the radio astronomy experiment, is continuation of the 20+ year interrupted study of SED. One important parameter that was not well measured by the Voyagers is the spectral shape of the bursts. This shape gives information on the length and duration of the discharge. Even the Cassini instrument will only partially measure this parameter because the upper frequency of the radio instrument is only 16 MHz. LOFAR should easily have the sensitivity and time resolution to measure SED and the spectral resolution to measure the spectrum accurately. Furthermore, LOFAR will undoubtedly be better calibrated than the Cassini or Voyager instruments. LOFAR observations of SEDs can provide invaluable auxiliary information to the Cassini observations, allowing real progress to be made in the study of atmospheric discharges at other planets.

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