A giant storm raging on Saturn which is producing lightning bolts 10,000 times stronger than those on Earth has been captured by scientists in unprecedented detail.
The storm has caused a ‘Great White Spot’ on the planet which is visible from the Earth.
Observations from the Cassini spacecraft – combined with images from ground-based telescopes – reveal the electric spectacle which is producing a tempest so intense the flashes are occurring at the rate of up to ten times a second, say researchers whose findings are published in two papers in Nature.
Great White Spots are so-called because they are large enough to be visible by telescope from Earth and break out rarely – about once every thirty years.
This outburst began last December as Cassini orbited the usually calm ringed planet while a network of ground-based observers also monitored the storm’s evolution.