3 ms·

Are such instruments of ongoing interest now that we have orbiting lightning mappers? https://www.goes-r.gov/products/baseline-lightning-detection.html https://

• aftbit 2y ago
  I'm personally interested in them but I'm not sure there's a good technical reason. I just think offline local sensing is cool.
• phoronixrly 2y ago
  It's a bit deeper than this... First of all, Blitzortung is as far as I can tell independent, volunteer-based and thus open for everyone to use, support and feed with data. It is also real-time (or at least max 10-15 seconds of latency). There are however drawbacks: - The hardware is relatively expensive (relatively because when you compare it to ham or professional RF tech, it is in fact dirt cheap :(), so there's a barrier for entry into the network if you would like to cover your area. Add to that having an appropriate place for the antennas. - There seem to be issues that make the default visualisation of lightning strikes as points on the map dubiously accurate. The example I notice most often is that whenever a lightning discharges in a cloud as opposed to the ground, it often gets detected as several lightning strikes. This may be as simple as adding the equivalent of error bars to each detection, but I am not any kind of authority on the matter.
• darnthenuggets 2y ago
  GOES is not quite as spatially accurate as surface mounted detectors and IIRC fails to recognize certain types of flashes that are of interest to humans. It’s more of a general intensity meter than anything like a warning system. Their technical documentation is extremely well written. They discuss most of their limitations in there (and you can get a SQS feed of it to poke around yourself)