Something has smashed into Jupiter, leaving behind a black spot in the planet’s atmosphere, scientists confirmed on Monday.
This is only the second time such an impact has been observed. The first was almost exactly 15 years ago, when more than 20 fragments of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 collided with the gas giant.
“This has all the hallmarks of an impact event, very similar to Shoemaker-Levy 9,” said Leigh Fletcher, an astronomer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, California. “We’re all extremely excited.”
The impact was discovered by amateur astronomer Anthony Wesley in Murrumbateman, Australia at about 1330 GMT on Sunday. Wesley noticed a black spot in Jupiter’s south polar region (see image) – but he very nearly stopped observing before he saw it.
“By 1am I was ready to quit … then changed my mind and decided to carry on for another half hour or so,” he wrote in his observation report. Initially he suspected he was seeing one of Jupiter’s moons or a moon’s shadow on the planet, but the location, size and speed of the spot ruled out that possibility.
‘Stroke of luck’
After checking images taken two nights earlier and not seeing the spot, he realised he had found something new and began emailing others.
Among the people he contacted were Fletcher and Glenn Orton, also at JPL. They had serendipitously scheduled observing time on NASA’s InfraRed Telescope Facility in Hawaii for that night.
“It was a fantastic stroke of luck,” Orton told New Scientist….
We highly reccommend New Scientist magazine . Click on the link for the complete article.