Measurements of radio frequency signals from lightning in Jupiter's atmosphere

Lightning detection on Venus: a critical review

“…Finally, specifically to test whether charging of the vehicle itself could be responsible for the observed signals, a discharge current meter was installed on the Groza-2 experiments on Veneras 13 and 14 (see Ksanfomality et al 1982)-those results do not appear to indicate any strong local contribution to the observed discharges but may be consistent with the presence of charged dust in the Venus lower atmosphere (Lorenz 2018). It is useful to put the Groza experiments in context with a similar investigation, the Lightning and Radio Emission Detector (LRD) on the Galileo Probe (e.g., Lanzerotti et al 1992;Rinnert et al 1989Rinnert et al , 1998. It was noted that the noise background of this instrument was found to be higher in flight (due to the operation of a nearby radiometer instrument with an electric motor) than in laboratory/field tests.…”

“…It may also be noted that the LRD instrument detected between 10 and several hundred RF pulses per second throughout the descent (over 150,000 pulses total), whereas no optical lightning detections were claimed (the few hundred counted optical pulses being attributed to spinmodulated sunlight early in descent, or to cosmic rays-see Rinnert et al 1998). This underscores the comparative long-range ability of electromagnetic vs optical sensing (and makes the optical nondetection of the VEGA balloon at Venus perhaps unsurprising).…”

“…The Galileo sensors at Jupiter, by contrast, recorded a power spectral density of up to 10 −3 nT 2 /Hz or~1 × 10 −6 nT/ Hz 0.5 at a similar frequency (15 kHz), a significantly lower level than Venus. On the other hand, a handful of waveforms were recorded by Galileo, the largest having a peak amplitude of a couple of tens of nanotesla (Lanzerotti et al 1996;Rinnert et al 1998).…”

Monte Carlo Radiative Transfer Modeling of Lightning Observed in Galileo Images of Jupiter

“…Other direct evidence of the lightning are Voyager 1 whistler observations (Scarf et al 1979) and radio frequency signals detected by the Galileo probe (Rinnert et al 1998). Reviews of jovian lightning observations can be found in Williams et al (1983), Uman (1987), and Rakov and Uman (2002).…”

23rd Book Issue

“…These observations challenge both our understanding of the electrification mechanisms and the effects of this electrification on the cloud microphysics; in fact, even the concept of a discrete lightning flash may not be meaningful in a supercell. 3) Finally, recent observations of lightning and storms on Jupiter (Rinnert et al 1998;Little et al 1999) -57607-071-9). The purposes of this book are to provide background information on many aspects of hurricanes and also sources for additional information.…”