Jupiter Just Got Hit by a Comet or Asteroid

 
Take that, Jupiter! The largest planet in the solar system just got whacked by an asteroid or a comet, and some intrepid stargazers have captured the planet’s latest collision on camera.
The flash from a new impact on Jupiter (arrow) is seen in this still from a video taken through a telescope by amateur astronomer John McKeon of Swords, Ireland on March 17, 2016.
The flash from a new impact on Jupiter (arrow) is seen in this still from a video taken through a telescope by amateur astronomer John McKeon of Swords, Ireland on March 17, 2016. Amateur astronomer John McKeon was observing the king of planets by telescope from Swords, Ireland, on March 17 when he captured this stunning time-lapse video of something hitting Jupiter. McKeon was recording the transit of Jupiter’s moons Io and Ganymede with an 11-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope and his ASI120mm camera when something struck Jupiter, and he struck cosmic pay dirt.

“The original purpose of the imaging session was to get this time-lapse, with a happy coincidence of the impact in the second, last capture of the night,” McKeon wrote in a YouTube video description.

While it’s still too early to know exact details on the Jupiter crash, NASA asteroid expert Paul Chodas, who heads the agency’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said there’s greater chance that an asteroid, not comet, is the culprit.

“It’s more likely to be an asteroid simply because there are more of them,” Chodas told Space.com by phone.

It’s not yet clear what hit Jupiter, but the impact was also captured by at least one other amateur astronomer — Gerrit Kernbauer of Mödling, Austria — according to Bad Astronomy’s Phil Plait, who posted Kernbauer’s YouTube video of the impact. According to Plait, the impact occurred at 00:18 GMT, or just after midnight, on March 17.

Kernbauer used a Skywatcher Newton 200/1000 Telescope to capture the Jupiter impact video, which you can see here:

“The seeing was not the best, so I hesitated to process the videos,” he wrote in his video description. “Nevertheless, 10 days later I looked through the videos and I found this strange light spot that appeared for less than one second on the edge of the planetary disc. Thinking back to Shoemaker-Levy 9, my only explanation for this is an asteroid or comet that enters Jupiter’s high atmosphere and burned up/explode very fast [sic].”

Another view of the bright impact flash on Jupiter (right side of planet), as seen by amateur astronomer John McKeon of Swords, Ireland, is seen in this still from a video captured through a telescope on March 17, 2016.
Another view of the bright impact flash on Jupiter (right side of planet), as seen by amateur astronomer John McKeon of Swords, Ireland, is seen in this still from a video captured through a telescope on March 17, 2016.
Credit: John McKeon
As Kernbauer says, this isn’t the first time Jupiter has been walloped by a space rock or comet.

“From our point of view this simply serves to remind us that impacts in the solar system are real and Jupiter gets more than its fair share of impacts,” said Chodas said. “It draws in a lot of asteroids and comets. We are seeing these impact flashes on Jupiter about once a year now, and that’s I believe because of instrumentation.”

Between July 16 and July 22 of 1994, fragments of the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 slammed into Jupiter as astronomers and stargazers watched in awe through their telescopes on Earth. The impacts left great scars that were visible on the Jupiter for months through even a small telescope.