Huge fireball slams into Jupiter, impact caught on video
This is the second time the planet gets it the other one occurred back in 2008 or 2009.
Asteroid hits Jupiter, impact recorded. This image provided by Anthony Wesley shows an amateur astronomer’s view of Jupiter Thursday June 3, 2010. Wesley said he witnessed a bright flash, upper left, from an object hitting the Jovian surface. The discovery was confirmed by another amateur sky gazer in the Philippines.
A huge fireball has been spotted on Jupiter in yet another collision from space caught on camera and video by amateur astronomers.
The new Jupiter crash occurred on June 3 at 20:31 UT (4:31p.m. Eastern Time) and was spotted by sky watcher Anthony Wesley in Australia and fellow amateur astronomer Christopher Go in the Philippines.
Wesley’s photos show the Jupiter fireball blazing in the atmosphere of the gas giant planet. So far, no visible scar in the clouds has been reported from the event.
Wesley described the event as a “large fireball” on his website, where he posted the photos taken from Broken Hill, Australia.
This new impact on Jupiter comes less than a year after a spectacular crash on July 19, 2009, when what scientist now think was an asteroid about 1,600 feet (500 meters) wide slammed into the planet. That collision created a massive bruise the size of the Pacific Ocean. [Gallery: Jupiter gets smacked.]
It was Wesley, too, who first spotted the July 2009 collision. His observations kicked off an international observation campaign to study the impact site.
Astronomers initially suspected a comet in last year’s impact, but announced this week that a rogue asteroid was the most likely culprit.
And Jupiter has been smacked before.
In 1994, the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 broke into more than 20 pieces and pelted Jupiter repeatedly. At the time, astronomers estimated such impacts could occur on Jupiter every 50 to 250 years. So they were surprised by the July 2009 impact.