Scientists have found evidence that another object has bombarded Jupiter, exactly 15 years after the first impacts by the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9.
Following up on a tip by an amateur astronomer, Anthony Wesley of Australia, that a new dark “scar” had suddenly appeared on Jupiter, this morning between 3 and 9 a.m. PDT (6 a.m. and noon EDT) scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., using NASA’s Infrared Telescope Facility at the summit of Mauna Kea, Hawaii, gathered evidence indicating an impact. New infrared images show the likely impact point was near the south polar region, with a visibly dark “scar” and bright upwelling particles in the upper atmosphere detected in near-infrared wavelengths, and a warming of the upper troposphere with possible extra emission from ammonia gas detected at mid-infrared wavelengths.
“We were extremely lucky to be seeing Jupiter at exactly the right time, the right hour, the right side of Jupiter to witness the event. We couldn’t have planned it better,” said Glenn Orton, a scientist at JPL. Orton and his team of astronomers kicked into gear early in the morning and haven’t stopped tracking the planet. They are downloading data now and are working to get additional observing time on this and other telescopes. This image was taken at 1.65 microns, a wavelength sensitive to sunlight reflected from high in Jupiter’s atmosphere, and it shows both the bright center of the scar (bottom left) and the debris to its northwest (upper left).
“It could be the impact of a comet, but we don’t know for sure yet,” said Orton. “It’s been a whirlwind of a day, and this on the anniversary of the Shoemaker-Levy 9 and Apollo anniversaries is amazing.”
The timing couldn’t be stranger. Apparently these impacts aren’t as rare as we would like to believe.
All these worlds are yours, save Europa. Attempt no landings there.
#1 for the win
There should have been an Earth shattering KABOOM … D’oh!
Looks like someone miscalculated their gravity
sling shot..
-s
Jupiter’s enormous gravitational “well” shields the inner planets from many of these asteroid collisions.
Thanks Jupiter… took another one for the Earth.
-now, onto the bitching..
Look at the size of that impact scar…if we didn’t have Jupiter’s gravity field to snatch that baby from space it could have have wreaked havoc on the inner solar system with it’s gravitational and electrical effects..
“We were extremely lucky to be seeing Jupiter at exactly the right time, the right hour, the right side of Jupiter to witness the event. We couldn’t have planned it better..”
um…lucky?? ‘xcuse me? seems luck had nothing to do with it..the Amateur dood Wesley had a lot to do with their “luck”.
WTF are we supporting NASA for if it takes a guy in Australia to give them the heads up on outer planetary impact strikes?
-thirdly…i’m thinking if the amateur dood did not make this public, NASA would have never announced it’s presence.
this object had to be huge for an impact that spot that large on Jupiter…
perhaps this is why they revoked access to the near earth object (NEO) satellite data a month or so ago??
they don’t want the general community knowing about all NEO’s zipping through the solar system as we enter the galactic center..
omg!!.. i think i may seen the electromagnetic effects of this hit last night while monitoring and compiling earth’s magnetospheric data for an EM theory in relation to all the plane accidents that have (and will) happen.. i saw a huge EM spike last night..
woah..kewl.
i’ll make a pic of what i’m talking about and post it shortly..
-s
@soundwash
What drugs are you on? Can I have some?
#8 Improbus: Got it in one.
The comet/asteroid/whatever was probably dark enough that it couldn’t be seen until it got pulled into Jupiter and left the dark collision spot.
Read more at “Bad Astronomy,” which is maintained and fact checked by astronomer Phil Plait:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/
The article is currently (7/21/09) the fourth one from the top.
many years ago i got the chance to attend a lecture from eugene levy, he described the absolute bad luck they had the night of the discovery of the comet they discovered that night, with bad film, (yeah they were still using film) {someone had gone through the film cannisters, found that it was unexposed and put it back on the shelf (oops the film was not exposed), it was mostly cloudy for the early part of the time allotted on the scope they were using. they happened to be looking in the right part of the sky at the right time to catch this event… but it was truly amazing they found anything like they had at all.
and yeah it takes someone in austrailia to see this as the skys there are dry and very unspoiled by pollution, either particulate or light. something we have in abundance here in the us
Another FAKE comet impact!
Let’s see … on the 25th anniversary of the moon landing we just happen to get a whole week of impacts on Jupiter. On the 40th, looks like a big one at the south pole. I can’t wait to see what happens on the 50th!
wow..I was going to do a rift on North Korea bombing Jupiter until I read the 1st post…
All these worlds are yours, save Europa. Attempt no landings there.
tcc3, I humbly acknowledge the Buddha within. Effin’ brilliant.
How about some credit for the AMATEUR astronomer who DISCOVERED it? NASA didn’t even bother naming him in the press release, which is pretty pathetic.
His name is Anthony Wesley. He is an Australian amateur astronomer. He discovered it using a home-made 14.5 inch telescope and a webcam. He produced some fantastic quality images of the planet. See:
http://jupiter.samba.org/jupiter-impact.html
#8 um…just morphine..nothing special.
(for back & pelvic pain)
-have anything you wanna trade for?
OK…now briefly, (i hope) i’m posting a link to a screen grab i made from a 24hr animation file of earth’s magnetosphere from the ACE satellite’s Real Time Data website in japan.
i’m on a f’kd up PC and cannot edit the graphic with arrows.
http://soundwash.net/solar_spikes/jupiter/EM_SPIKE_JULY_19B.jpg
Note in the second graph from the top the proton density graph (Dens.p/cc) has huge peak that maxes out the graph.
so i’m positing that the impact on Jupiter created magnetic/charged particle shockwave that propagated from Jupiter to here some nine hours later.. and showed up on the the image i provided. to see the full 24hr animation i clipped the image from, either dl the 21mb AVI file in the same folder as the pic here.
-or to the original ACE animation site in japan here.
-and DL the file dated 07/19/2009.
(you need a DivX codec to view the AVI’s)
The animation will show the huge oscillation that hits earth’s magnetic field quite vividly. the AVI for 7/20 shows what may be further shockwaves hitting the magnetosphere in light of the fact there has been no activity from the sun that can account for these shockwaves.
( i have a few more frame grabs in the folder as well, but the animation says it all.)
Given an earth sized object impacted Jupiter, i imagine it could have easily created a huge electrical/charged particle flux(change) in Jupiter’s magnetic field that would traveled throughout the solar system, eventually dinging earth’s magnetosphere and registering on the ACE satellite..seeing as how the entire solar system and all bodies within it are electrically coupled.
Anybody schooled in this at all to add further insight? (preferably someone with electrical engineering or plasma physics background, but i’ll take anything) in relation to planetary bodies?)
I cannot find expanding explanations of the graph measurements in the pic without wading through tons of half baked, fictitious gravity based explanations that never really answer anything.
SO…anyone think i’m on to something here?
-s
(ps..i have two other spikes almost identical in shape, one based off the recent N.Korea nuke test and the other, shows up covering the *Exact* time frame flight 1549 went down on Jan 15th of this year..) :O
yada yada
#9 Floyd, -amen to that.
-nice find. IMO, Anthony Wesley should have the impactor named after him..
-s
What is Hubble doing?
And so be it, life begins in Jupiter.
I read somewhere that you can’t have complex life (such as on Earth) without gas giants further out to screen the solar system for asteroids and comets. Otherwise you are looking at dinosaur-killing meteor strikes all the time.