Saturn. Early March, 2008.

Extraterrestrial storms are not uncommon.  And it isn’t uncommon for these storms to last a long time.  According to the post, Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, featured as the picture of the day on July 18, 1999 (which was a picture from Voyager 1 taken circa 1979), has been studied for at least 150 years and has been observed from Earth for over 300!

Another point of interest, about the electrical storm on Saturn, is that the “… storm has roughly the width of planet Earth.”.  I’m interested to see how long this storm lasts.  Aren’t you?

“That’s no moon.” – Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars: A New Hope.   But wait, yes it is.  If you look closely at the image of Saturn’s electrical storm, which has been color shifted to better allow us humans to see some of the spectrum that we couldn’t otherwise, you will see Saturn’s rings.  Just below the rings you will see a faint “dot”, which to the untrained (read: mine) eye, appears to bit a fleck of dust on the lens.  This is Saturn’s small moon Janus.

Side note: We had an excellent view of Saturn when we attended Public Night at the Astronomical Observatory. But it wasn’t anywhere near as good as this shot and we certainly didn’t see the electrical storm.

Source: NASA: Astronomy Picture of the Day: A Persistent Electrical Storm on Saturn.

But wait, there’s a lot more…

After writing this morning, I’ve since read another article on NASA.gov about Cassini tracking the “raging storm” on Saturn.  There are quite a few tidbits of interest.

1. “The new storm is located in Saturn’s southern hemisphere–in a region nicknamed “Storm Alley” by mission scientists–where the previous lightning storms were observed by Cassini.”
2. “Amateur astronomers have kept track of the storm 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.”"
3. “Cassini’s radio plasma wave instrument detects the storm every time it rotates into view, which happens every 10 hours and 40 minutes, the approximate length of a Saturn day. Every few seconds the storm gives off a radio pulse lasting for about a tenth of a second, which is typical of lightning bolts and other electrical discharges. These radio waves are detected even when the storm is over the horizon as viewed from Cassini, a result of the bending of radio waves by the planet’s atmosphere. ”

The radio waves they are referring to are actually recorded by Cassini.  You can listen to, and look at the statistical data for, that audio here.  The audio is only 28 seconds long but represents two hours of audio on Saturn.

Well I was digging through some video and I found the video that Eliza had taken while I took these photos of the lightning. Although the majority of the video is a simple black screen with Eliza and I having a very uninteresting conversation – I find it a nice video to see how we ended up getting those lightning photos.

If you are reading this in some type of feed-reader, be sure to come to the site to read this post so you too can watch the video.

What I thought was really interesting, after having uploaded this video to Viddler and tagging it with lightning each time a bolt shot across the screen, was that we technically gave ourselves a “graph” of sorts to show the frequency of lightning over the 10-minute period of the video. If you look at the timeline of the video each black dot on the timeline represents a bolt of lightning. Pretty cool if you are a geek like me. This was an unexpected result but a welcomed one.

Hope you enjoy this video and the photos. Thanks for recording it Eliza.

[tags]lightning, video, viddler, weather, storm, thunder, bolt, colin devroe, eliza devroe, photos[/tags]
[slug]lightning-video[/slug]

Yearly camping trips seem to be the norm for me since I was a teenager. Once married, the trend has continued, though Eliza was not always able to go. This time I was very happy she was able to go, even though the mosquitoes seemed to pay her much more attention than most of us.

This year, we had the opportunity to camp somewhere close to home. With gas prices the way they are, this just seemed like a good idea. We chose to camp at Keen Lake campground in Waymart, Pennsylvania – which is about a 25-minute drive from our apartment to our campsite. The fact that it was only a 25-minute drive ended up coming in handy.

Left to right starting in back: Chris, Bryan
Second row: Colin, Eliza, Trudy, Josh, Niki
Front row: Giana, Ivan, Ava, Andrea

On our first night at Keen Lake, there was a horrible thunderstorm that hit at around 3am. It was over by about 5am, but most of us were up at that point. What made this thunderstorm so bad, was not necessarily the few inches of rain that ended up failing in such a short period of time – but rather the lightning and thunder.

This storm was literally over our heads. Frighteningly close. One particular bolt of lightning struck the island in the middle of the lake we were sleeping next to. If I had to guess, I’d guess that the island was about 1,500 feet from our very own feet. Those 1,500 feet (or ~ 1/3 of a mile), were all water mind you. When this bolt hit, it made a sound like no other I’ve ever heard. It literally compressed my chest and made me entire body come off of our air mattress. Others said that they felt the same pressure when it hit.

The next day, while kayaking I was talking to Mike Kopa (ex-coworker of mine circa 1999-2001 and now employee of Keen Lake campground) and he told me what happened when that bolt hit the island. On said island is a cabin available for rent. A family of 5 (I think), and their dog were staying in the cabin when the bolt struck. The bolt hit the TV antenna for the cabin, followed it down through the TV (blew the TV right out) and spread through the cabin via the electrical system. Where cords led to lamps, the rug burned. Various appliances were laid useless. And most tragic of all, the family dog was sleeping on one of the extension cords and lost its life due to electric shock.

An incredible story to be sure. But it does show you the sheer force of nature is something that, while attempted by many smart individuals, can never be stopped. I remember talking with an electrician that used to work for a hospital in Chicago, Illinois. He called lightning “magic”, as all their attempts to stop it were useless. He said “…if hit directly with lightning, there is almost nothing you can do to stop it. We have circuit breakers in the hospital that are so big that you wouldn’t be able to touch both sides – lightning jumps across them as if they didn’t even exist.”.

The rest of the weekends weather was very nice, and we did our best to take advantage of it. We went kayaking, played frisbee and bocce, and swam at every opportunity. You can see photos from our trip in this photo set on Flickr.

Can’t wait to go camping again, though I’d rather not wait an entire year to do so.

[tags]camping, keen lake, lightning, thunder, storm, camp, campsite, campground, pennsylvania, waymart, colindevroe[/tags]