Space Topics: Jupiter
The Year in Pictures: 2009
Amateur Astronomer Discovers a Jupiter Impact
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Discovery image of the 2009 Jupiter impact
Credit: Anthony Wesley
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In the late summer of 2009, Jupiter was a popular focus of amateur astronomers.
It was a brilliant target high in the sky (opposition was on August 14), and
because its equinox was on June 22, there were many opportunities to capture
mutual events of moons and shadow transits of the moons across the disk. July
19, therefore, was a routine night of fun Jupiter observing for Australian
amateur Anthony Wesley, who views the sky using a 14.5-inch telescope at his
home in Murrumbateman, New South Wales.
Because conditions for observing were
not particularly good that evening, he almost quit but instead left the telescope
and returned half an hour later to see if things had improved. Not only had
conditions improved, but a dark mark had also rotated into view near Jupiter’s
south pole. Wesley quickly realized it was the wrong size and in the wrong
position to be a moon’s
shadow, and moreover it was moving too slowly; in fact, it was rotating in
sync with a nearby white oval. Wesley had
discovered a new impact feature on Jupiter’s clouds, about 15 years to the day after the Shoemaker-Levy 9
comet impact. Over the subsequent weeks, amateur and professional telescopes
around the world, including the Hubble Space Telescope (which
was still in its commissioning phase following the May servicing mission),
monitored the decay of the impact feature as it was torn apart by Jupiter’s
atmospheric currents.
Jupiter with impact scar
The newly refurbished Hubble Space Telescope captured this view of Jupiter on July 23, 2009, just four days after amateur astronomer Anthony Wesley discovered an impact scar close to its south pole.
Credit: NASA, ESA, M. Wong (Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.), H. B. Hammel (Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.), and the Jupiter Impact Team
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