Science
Something Crashed Into Jupiter On Tuesday; Astronomers Trying To Figure Out What Exactly
- Amateur astronomers have caught a huge explosion from an impact on Jupiter.
- Follow-up observations may present a clearer picture of this impact event.
Jupiter and Three Galilean Satellites. Photo taken 5 February 1979 by Voyager 1 spacecraft. (Source: NASA/JPL)
Something — and astronomers aren’t sure what it was yet — smacked into Jupiter on 13 September, producing a bright impact flash.
Fortunately, some here witnessed it.
The light on the biggest planet in the Solar System was captured by José Luis Pereira, an amateur astronomer from Brazil.
The image was processed by French planetary observer and imaging specialist Marc Delcroix.
The observation is said to have been made under bad weather conditions and the recorded video was put through “DeTeCt”, a software tool developed by Delcroix to catch planetary impacts.
By virtue of its large size — Jupiter is so big that more than 1,300 earths could fit inside it — the gas giant that is more than twice as massive as all the other planets combined, takes hits from large and rapidly flying objects in space. In the process, it protects its small planetary neighbours, among them Earth.
Whether this strike has left an atmospheric scar on Jupiter will be revealed by follow-up observations.
The capture by members of Société Lorraine d'Astronomie, Arnould among them, using a 62 cm F/15 telescope from the Astroqueyras observatory in St-Véran, France, aligns with the date and time specified by Pereira.
Before this, a Jupiter impact flash was observed on 7 August 2019 at 4.07 Universal Time, detected by astrophotographer Ethan Chappel.
Going further back in time, impact flashes were observed in the years 2017, 2016, 2012, 2010, and 2009, as noted in Italian amateur astronomer Ernesto Guido’s blog about comets and asteroids.
Perhaps, the most famous of the hits taken by Jupiter was by the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, named after its discoverers Eugene and Carolyn Shoemaker and David Levy.
The comet had gotten too close for comfort to the gas giant, only to then be shredded by tidal forces resulting from Jupiter’s gravity.
According to NASA, the impacts left “dark, ringed scars” that remained for almost a year before being swept away by Jupiter's winds.
Carolyn Shoemaker passed away just last month, on 13 August 2021, with her co-discoverer Levy writing her obituary for the journal Nature.
In his piece, Levy recalls a reporter asking Carolyn what would happen if the comet’s fragments were to hit Earth instead, to which she initially responded, “We would all die.”
Thank goodness for Jupiter!
