Ground-Based Study of Saturn Lightning

Radio signatures of lightning discharges on Saturn have first been discovered by the Voyager spacecraft in 1980/81. After the Voyager flybys, the next sets of measurements only became available in 2004, when the Cassini spacecraft approached Saturn. Since then, Cassini provides continuous monitoring of Saturn’s lightning activity. In 2006, ground-based observations became available as a complementary source of information. Using a new broadband receiver at the UTR-2 radio telescope (Ukraine), Saturn lightning was observed over the whole spectral range of the instrument (10-30 MHz). This allows study of the temporal fine structure of the emission with a much finer temporal resolution than that of the routine satellite observations. More recently, Saturn lightning was also observed by two further ground-based radiotelescopes, namely WSRT (the Netherlands) and LOFAR (Europe). We present first results of recent ground-based observations of Saturn lightning performed with the radiotelescopes UTR-2, WSRT and LOFAR, and we describe the aims of future observations using these instruments.