The caption of the video (shown above) states, "George Hall captured a flash, likely an asteroid vaporizing in Jupiter's atmosphere, on September 10th, 2012. Scientists see the big planet as a cosmic vacuum cleaner. See Mr. Hall's astrophotography here: http://georgeastro.weebly.com/jupiter.html". (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&;;v=zAWk72ZTPuU)
Amateur astronomer George Hall, from Dallas, Texas, recorded the event on video on Monday, September 10, 2012.
Hall states that the explosion occurred at 11:35:30 Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), or 6:35:30 a.m. Central Daylight Time (CDT).
The explosion occurred inside the east limb of the planet Jupiter, at about longitude 335 degrees, latitude 12 degrees north. The flash was thought by Hall to be about 100 miles (160 kilometers) in diameter.
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Dan Peterson describes the event: "All of a sudden, a brilliant pinpoint of blazing white light started to grow and brighten just inside Jupiter's morning limb, this was in stark contrast to the planets yellowish color, its shape was slightly elliptical in its north/south axis and was about as bright in appearance as a fourth magnitude star."
Peterson adds, "I couldn't help but smile when I saw what was happening, a one in a trillion sight I thought. Then, just as rapidly as it appeared it started to dim until another second had past and it was forever gone. I just sat there and remembered thinking how amazing and surreal this all seems and how fortunate I was to observe this celestial fireball."
Peterson concluded with, "Had such an object hit our Earth it would have been a bad hair day to say the least."
