William Atkins
Saturday, 25 July 2009 18:49
Science -
Space
Page 1 of 3
The Hubble Space Telescope was detoured in its recalibration, after being refurbished by the NASA STS-125 astronauts in May 2009, to take images of the recent impact spot on Jupiter, which was discovered by an Australian amateur astronomer on July 19, 2009.
Some type of “atmospheric debris,” maybe from a comet or asteroid, collided with the atmosphere of Jupiter on July 19.
Four days later, as the spot continues to expand, NASA asked mission controllers with the Hubble Space Telescope to take images of the spot with the newly installed Wide Field Camera 3 onboard the Hubble.
According to the July 24, 2009 NASA media brief “
Hubble Space Telescope Captures Rare Jupiter Collision,” the change of plans was due to the extreme rarity of such a collision with the planet Jupiter.
In fact, Amy Simon-Miller (of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland), stated,
“Because we believe this magnitude of impact is rare, we are very fortunate to see it with Hubble. Details seen in the Hubble view shows a lumpiness to the debris plume caused by turbulence in Jupiter's atmosphere."
Simon-Miller also stated that the impacted object, which disintegrated upon impact with Jupiter, was the size of
“several football fields.”
When it hit Jupiter’s atmosphere, the force of the explosion was
“thousands of times more powerful than the suspected comet or asteroid that exploded over the Siberian Tunguska River Valley in June 1908.” The resulting impact site was described later as about the size of Earth. [NASA]
As reported in the July 21, 2009 iTWire article “
Jupiter gets bonked by either a comet or asteroid,” Australian amateur astronomer Anthony Wesley was the first person to discover the impact. Wesley then contacted two NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory astronomers—Leigh Fletcher, and JPL Glenn Orton—who verified his claim.
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