Jupiter Gets Dinged… Again
We mentioned this on our Facebook page a few hours after it happened. But if you haven’t heard, Jupiter was whacked last week by a stray comet or asteroid.
And this time, the impact was caught live on video. Here’s what it looked like…
The impact was an amazing coincidence, coming on the same day (June 3) that astronomers announced a study of an impact of Jupiter on just last July 19. An even bigger coincidence: this recent impact was observed by Anthony Wesley, the Australian amateur astronomer who first saw last year’s event.
Another amateur, Christopher Go of the Phillipines, also observed the impact and captured a short video. You can see the video here if you have a media player that reads WMV files.
You can see a full color still image of the impact, taken by Anthony Wesley, at the top of this page.
There’s no evidence this latest impact created a dark spot on Jupiter, as did last year’s event. Based on the shape and color of last year’s impact, astronomers from the Hubble Telescope’s Space Sciences Institute in Baltimore deduced it was caused not by a comet, but by an asteroid some 500 meters across.
As for last week’s impact… it’s too early to tell what banged into Jupiter. It may have been an object too small and light to dredge up any cool, dark material from the lower regions of the atmosphere. But have a look for yourself at Jupiter in the southeastern pre-dawn sky. If you have a telescope, crank up the magnification and look for a dark spot. Here are the times when the impact site will cross the central area of the planet:
June 8: 8:21UT, 18:17UT; June 9: 4:12UT, 14:08UT; June 10: 0:04UT, 10:00UT, 19:55UT; June 11: 5:51UT, 15:47UT
Remember Universal Time (UT) is the same as Greenwich Mean Time. You can convert to local time here.
Small objects smacking into Jupiter is not that uncommon (though seeing them hit in real time IS uncommon). Because of its strong gravitational field, Jupiter often attracts comets and asteroids from the outer solar system, keeping them from banging into planets in the inner solar system. Which is a good thing for our small planet.
