NASA confirms Jupiter smash

[G_j]

http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2009/07/22/2632706.htm

NASA confirms Jupiter smash

Wednesday, 22 July 2009 Irene Klotz
Discovery News

Fifteen years after being battered by Comet Shoemaker-Levy, Jupiter has drawn the fire of another renegade body.

A dark scar near the planet's southern polar region, first noticed by an amateur astronomer in Australia, is believed to have been caused by a comet crashing into the giant planet.

Infrared images taken by a NASA telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, show a dark scar-like patch and a bright shower of debris particles in the planet's upper atmosphere.

The impact site also shows a warming in the planet's troposphere, and possibly higher levels of ammonia gas.

"On Friday night I was imaging the same area that I was imaging Sunday night so I could tell pretty quickly when I saw this black mark coming into view that it was something that wasn't there when I last looked two days before," says amateur astronomer Anthony Wesley, who discovered the crash site on July 19 from outside his home observatory near Murrumbateman, NSW Australia.

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[jakeXT]

1. Now even the skeptic (Phil Plait) believes it.

In this case, I think we can say beyond any reasonable doubt that Jupiter suffered a major impact recently. I was wary at first, and maybe still wavering a bit even later, but now there’s no question at all. Why? Because of this image from the giant Gemini North telescope:



http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/07/23/jupiter-bringing-the-hammer-down/