Image shows a large impact shown on the bottom left on Jupiter's south polar region captured on July 20, 2009, by NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility in Mauna Kea, Hawaii.
Credit: NASA/JPL/Infrared Telescope Facility
SYDNEY: An object has slammed into Jupiter leaving a "black scar" the size of Earth in the atmosphere of the giant gaseous planet. Experts believe the object is likely to have been a comet.
Images taken using an infrared telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, show a dark scar-like patch and a bright shower of debris particles in the planet's upper atmosphere.
Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, ruled out a weather event as the cause of the mark.
Unlike all known weather phenomena
"It was completely unlike any of the weather phenomena that we observe on Jupiter," said Glenn Orton, a NASA planetary scientist. "We knew this was an impact… there's no natural phenomenon that creates a black spot and bright particles like that."
This is the first time an impact has been observed on Jupiter since 1994 when more than 20 fragments of the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 (SL9) slammed into the planet. "This has all the hallmarks of an impact event, very similar to Shoemaker-Levy 9," said NASA's Leigh Fletcher.
The shape and brightness of the mark will help in determining the energy and origin of the object that impacted Jupiter, said the scientists. They believe it is the result of a single asteroid or comet, rather than a chain of fragments, as in the case of SL9.
"It's early days, but it's probably intermediate between the smallest and largest of the SL9 fragments, produced by something maybe a few hundred metres across," said Fletcher.
"Tremendously exciting"
We've only known of something like this impacting Jupiter twice in recorded astronomy, he said. "So it's tremendously exciting that we're able to observe it from here on Earth."
Australian amateur astronomer Anthony Wesley, based in Murrumbateman, NSW, first discovered the evidence of the impact on Sunday.
"What I saw… looking at my telescope was a black mark, the size of the Earth, down near Jupiter's south pole. The mark wasn't there when I took photos of that same region two days before." he told Cosmos Online.
"It took me about fifteen minutes looking at the image on my computer to realise I was looking at the after effects of something large having hit Jupiter at that location," said Wesley. "I continued recording information for the next hour and after that I came up to the house and started sending out alerts to everyone I could think of."
Jupiter's Scar
Sir,
Jupiter with the assemblage of multiple moons numbering up to 63 named after Galileo ever since 1610 AD, needless to mention is subjected to frequent impacts of comets ect.. and also referred as the Vacuum cleaner of the SOLAR SYSTEM ..
It is really great to notice that there is never been an impact on 63 moons giving scope for unimaginable celestial impact.
Talluri Vijai Kumar
Impact
I had not realized that "amateurs" sometimes saw such large and unusual events; events which have been missed by the professionals. I guess it makes sense that those who are paid to watch the heavens, can only watch so much of it. But shouldn't amateurs lose their amateur status when they do find such an event for the larger community? Seems to me there ought to be an endowment for one-time recognition payouts (of whatever sum possible, to encourage amateur astonomy. Will this impact be called by the name of the amateur who observed it, for instance?