A&A 621, A113 (2019) Astronomy https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201833014 & © ESO 2019 Astrophysics Analysis of a long-lived, two-cell lightning storm on Saturn? G. Fischer1, J. A. Pagaran2, P. Zarka3, M. Delcroix4, U. A. Dyudina5, W. S. Kurth6, and D. A. Gurnett6 1 Space Research Institute, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Schmiedlstr. 6, 8042 Graz, Austria e-mail:
[email protected] 2 Institute of Physics, University of Graz, Universitätsplatz 5, 8010 Graz, Austria 3 LESIA, Observatoire de Paris, CNRS, PSL, UPMC/SU, UPD, 5 Place Jules Janssen, 92195 Meudon, France 4 Commission des observations planétaires, Société Astronomique de France, Paris, France 5 Geological and Planetary Sciences, 150–21, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA 6 Department of Physics and Astronomy, The University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 52242, USA Received 13 March 2018 / Accepted 14 November 2018 ABSTRACT Lightning storms in Saturn’s atmosphere can last for a few days up to several months. In this paper we analyze a lightning storm that raged for seven and a half months at a planetocentric latitude of 35◦ south from the end of November 2007 until mid-July 2008. Thun- derstorms observed by the Cassini spacecraft before this time were characterized by a single convective storm region of 2000 km in ∼ size, but this storm developed two distinct convective storm cells at the same latitude separated by 25◦ in longitude. The second storm cell developed in March 2008, and the entire two-cell convective system was moving with a westward∼ drift velocity of about 0.35 deg per day, which differs from the zonal wind speed.