Quote:
Originally Posted by renormalised
Thought so....very similar cloud formations (and compositions) on Jupiter as well. Yeah, water ice would also be another good candidate. The mechanisms of formation of those storms sounds quite similar to the way thunderstorms form on Earth, except that the heat source on Saturn would be for a majority of cases internal, and not from sunlight. But that would depend on how well the clouds there trapped what little heat they got from the Sun. Seems like the formation of lightning there is pretty similar to terrestrial lightning...separation of charge. Only a lot more energetic!!!!.
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You have it in a nutshell, very similar to the way thunderstorms form on Earth. The heat source is most definitely internal and using RPWS data combined with amateur data from Earth Georg hopes to gain a greater understanding of the dynamics of the processes at work driving these electrostatic discharges.
Critical to this is the supply of images by amateurs.
Regards
Trevor