Has a Comet Hit Jupiter?

July 19, 2009

This is a little too mystical for my tastes, but on the cusp of Walter Cronkite’s passing, and the Apollo 11 moon landing 40th anniversary, a mysterious dark spot has appeared on Jupiter.

The dark feature was first observed at approximately 13:30 universal time today by amateur astronomer Anthony Wesley from his home observatory just outside Murrumbateman NSW Australia. Wesley photographed Jupiter through a 14.5 inch Newtonian reflector.

Science fiction fans will remember the closing chapters of Arthur C. Clarke’s 2010: Odyssey Two when black alien monoliths began popping up in Jupiter’s atmosphere.

The explanation for this one is a bit more down to Earth, per the observer’s posting tonight: 

“Preliminary image showing a black mark in Jupiters South Polar Region (SPR) which is almost certainly the result of a large impact - either an asteroid or comet - similar to the Shoemaker-Levy impacts in 1994.”

Let me caution that as of this writing the spot has not been reported being sighted independently by anyone else. Also, it is too near the pole to be a satellite shadow, and also moves with the planet’s rotation according to Wesley.

Beginning on July 20 1994, a string of comet pieces, from the breakup of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, bombarded Jupiter for nearly a week. Each fragment exploded in Jupiter’s atmosphere and blew black material above the cloud tops. Now, the new spot is reminiscent of the scars let behind by SL9 exactly 15 years ago.

The SL9 event was considered a once in 10,000-year spectacle. But individual comet or asteroid collisions may happen much more frequently on Jupiter. Prior to SL9 dark spots had been occasionally reported in Jupiter's atmosphere. But their origin was not understood. 

This will reinvigorate 2012 soothsayers that strange cosmic events are coming becasue of the end of the Mayan calendar. But for the rest of us more pragmatic observers, this unusual event will be followed closely by telescopes all over the world over the next few days. 

Comments

[charles kafka]

to totally misquote and paraphrase freud "sometimes a comet hitting jupiter is just a comet hitting jupiter" lol.. good catch
if it wasn't for shoemaker levi we wouldn't even know what to look for.

[2012]

Very interesting! I have never seen Jupiter like this. I hope there is a followup story of this because I would like to know what it really is.

[warrenf]

if an asteroid or comet hits jupiter and no one notices...did it still happen?

[lightning09]

awesome, just imagine when a comet or asteroid hits earth, I wonder who will notice our misfortune

[albert]

It will be interesting to see if and when this phenomenon is independently confirmed by other astronomers.

[reagan0]

BTW, 2012 is not the end of the Mayan calendar. It is the end of the current Mayan baktun, and the beginning of the next baktun. A baktun is similar to our millennium (just not the same number of years).

[Becasue]

typo in last PP

[clary]

Umm yeah, jupiters magnetosphere attracts things like comets and asteroids. it isnt that big of a deal. Jupiter acts like earths "big brother" protecting it from comets and asteroids when they come earths way by pulling asteroids and comets towards itself.

[Fred]

Planet X - Oort Cloud ?
- Astronomers say that the comets in the periphery of our solar system - the Kuiper Belt and the Opik - Oort Cloud - could be shaken if Another Star would come closer.
- Californian Congressman for Planet X Forsight - The Sky is Falling: the deadly threat posed by Near Earth Objects and what we can do about it By Rep. Dana Rohrabacher...
- Stephen Hawking: "Asteroid Impacts Biggest Threat to Intelligent Life in the Galaxy...
- Military Hush-Up: Incoming Space Rocks Now Classified... EXPERTS CALL FOR GLOBAL NETWORK TO PREVENT ASTEROID DISASTERS:
http://cristiannegureanu.blogspot.com/2009/07/cbs-news-jupiter-hit-by-large-object.html

[Gemini44]

If a comet can hit Jupiter,what's to stop one from hitting us? It's probably been hit a lot and we just didn't know. We only know about SL9..and now here may be another one.
That's too often if you ask me.

[Brian Callahan]

Astronomers say Jupiter has apparently been struck by an object, possibly a comet.

Images taken early Monday by NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility, at the summit of the Mauna Kea volcano in Hawaii, show a dark scar in Jupiter's atmosphere near the south pole of the gas giant.

Brian R. Callahan
New York, NY

[bob]

What Wesley added "In terms of scale, if something like that had happened on Earth, I think it would have been a major catastrophe," .
That tell us that the Earth will be destroyed
and it can be any month from now.
I`m saying to everyone in the world why a war if we can come to the table and talk about how to safe our Earth not to happen like with Jupiter.

Bob

[Rebecca]

Now, as far fetched as this will sound to many people, I dont think a comet hit Jupiter. What I believe happened is that the extra planet in our solar system that is not recorded in most books nor known to the average person because its orbit is so large that it has not passed through to our technologies or scientists eyes, therefore they do not want to accept it yet but it is in theory.
If anyone knows about the Sumerian peoples or have read any Zacharia Sitchin books will know what I'm talking about. Just google either thing or even youtube it.
There are many things that are not brought to the average person's mind for obvious reasons.
Anyways, I don't think a comet would leave such a large 'scar' on Jupiter. It would have had to be a very large comet to leave such a remenant.

[ron]

It had to be an asteriod, a comet would have been noticed before hitting Jupiter.

[matthew tardif]

I agree with above, if it was a comet someone would have spotted it before it hit our Jovian brother. A large asteroid, or better yet a brown dwarf, probably snuck past our thousands of telescopes and satellite dishes! Maybe that was "Planet X", or "Nibiru", etc... Could a failed star such as a brown dwarf escape our detection, anyone?

[Gerard Eveillard]

Really, lets be clear about this, whether it was an asteroid which to me is the most likely senario, or planex , even maybe a moon of jupiter itself, what ever the case maybe, its time to financially put our money to our mouth and bring our technology to protect our earth, the only place we know that we can live on. its that simple.

[rationalist]

A comet would not necessarily have been seen before striking Jupiter. An asteroid is a rocky body. A comet is any body that is mostly water (ice) and/or dust, with only a small (if any) rocky center. The comet would generally only have a tail when it is near the sun because the solar heat vaporizes the ice and causes it to stream outward. So, way out by Jupiter, they would actually look much the same. (Invisible, in fact.)

As to the bizarre extra planet idea, if something the size of a planet hit Jupiter, the explosion would blow huge portions of Jupiter's gas away. Remember, what you see of Jupiter is clouds of the lightest gasses there are. Hydrogen, helium, methane and such. The comet/asteroid didn't strike anything solid; it got superheated by falling through the atmosphere and exploded. (As meteors do in our much smaller atmosphere.) What is seen is not a crater or any such, but the swirling of the atmosphere with the explosion and the mixed debris from the object.

[Turboguppy]

As noted above, a comet at that distance from the sun would likely not be in the process of vaporizing, and thus would not be as visible. Comet Shoemaker Levy 9 was actually a lucky find for Shoemaker and Levy both. If it hadn't gone around jupiter several times and broke into a dozen pieces, they might not have noticed it at all. With this object, if it came in from the Oort Cloud (a cloud of bodies in distant orbit of the sun) or the Kuiper belt (a thin belt of material of which Pluto is a member, as well as several other newly discovered dwarf planets) and came almost directly in, we may never have noticed it. It is a misconception that our solar system is under a steady, watchfull surveillance. In fact, we are hunting frantically to find all the objects we can out there, so as to avoid this very thing happening to Earth.

In answer to the question "how could a small comet make such a big hole," one must not think in terms of size, but of speed. That comet was made of volitile materials, that is, materials that really want to be gasses. When it hit Jupiter at stupendous speed, all those materials were vaporized. A comet only a few tens of miles across would explode under those circumstances with a force unmatchable by all the nuclear weapons on earth. This would make a big dent in Jupiter's upper atmosphere, disrupting it for days, if not weeks, perhaps longer if the comet contained a good deal of rocky material or was even bigger in size.

Our solar system, if one does a small amount of research, turns out to be a celestial shooting gallery. Jupiter is HUGE. About 380 times the mass of the Earth. It's gravity is strong enough that wandering material in the solar system is caught by it and either flung out of the solar system for good, captured in jupiter's orbit, sent toward the sun and then ejected, or swallowed by Jupiter itself. In this way, we expect Jupiter to take hits every once in a while. Jupiter is like our bodyguard, jumping in front of bullets for us. BTW, Jupiter's magnetic field is strong, but it is the GRavity, not the Magnetic field, that is responsible for deflection of small objects.

Let's not kid ourselves though. Huge impacts have happened on earth in the past. They can happen again. We need to do more research and spend more money trying to locate these things and finding ways to avoiding the KO if one comes our way.

Wait. No one wants to pay for space research. We have too many problems here at home to worry about first....

[michael packard]

About 4 o'clock this morning (Sat Sept 5), I was looking at Jupiter with a telescope and I'm positve I saw a comet southwest, very close to Jupiter, with its tail pointing away from the planet but lined up with it. The tail isn't very long. Has anyone seen this? I live in Temecula, CA.

[michael packard]

what i mean by southwest of jupiter is this: when i was looking at jupiter which was basically directly east, the comet was below and to the left of the planet. it was really cool. can anyone tell me more about it? i can't find anything about it.

[michael packard]

i'm sorry. replace the word 'jupiter' with 'mar's. it can't be venus; it's too low.

[michael packard]

i got it right this time. it's not mars; it's venus because it's closely 5 orion shoulder widths to the left of orions left shoulder star (betelgeuse? - kind of reddish). it's collinear with orion's shoulders. i'll keep looking for info on this.

[michael packard]

i know i thought it was jupiter, then mars. i got it right this time. it's not mars; it's venus because it's closely 5 orion shoulder widths to the left of orions left shoulder star (betelgeuse? - kind of reddish). it's collinear with orion's shoulders. i'll keep looking for info on this. i'm talking about the comet that's just down and to the left of venus. anybody seen it?
Also, it's tail is pointing towards, not away from venus, as originally stated.