Welcome to the SAVS blog page!

These are the adventures of SAVS — a team of 6 undergraduate students at Lancaster University, investigating the variation of Saturn’s northern and southern auroras as the planet’s seasons change. We have chosen this as our 10-week mission to further understand and compare the auroral behaviours at the northern and southern hemispheres.

Each member of our group has been assigned individual tasks, but we will always come together as a team to complete our mission. Meet our members:

Members of the team investigating the variation of auroras on Saturn as seasons change — (L-R) Mission Leader, **Leah Potts**; Chief Literature Researcher, **Diyura Sasitharan**; Chief Report Writer, **Michelle Ly**; Administrator, **Emily Jago**; Communications Officer, **Munirih Marie**; and Chief Data Analyst, **Jude McLoughlin**.

“Why auroras?” you ask. Honestly, there’s a lot we can learn from them. Auroras are a footprint of the extra-atmospheric energy source inducing them. From their analysis, we can get a snapshot of this energy source and its impact on the glowing atmosphere. This data is useful for assessing and predicting space weather in the solar system.

As a part of our mission, we will be releasing weekly updates to keep our supporters informed about our progression. You’ll be able to learn alongside us and become (almost) real-life researchers too! We hope that you can immerse yourself in our project-verse and follow along with our journey, from inception to completion, so click the links below to see our weekly progress:

Updates

Week 1

Just in case you didn’t know what an aurora is — it is a result of the emission of photons, due to… Continue Reading

Week 2

Our presentation went well! We’ve received some useful feedback and had a private meeting with… Continue Reading

Week 3

We’ve spent this week practising our Python coding so that we could create images from raw data… Continue Reading