Impact on Jupiter?

Will have to await for astronomers to confirm.

http://cs.astronomy.com/asycs/forums/t/41364.aspx
http://www.acquerra.com.au/astro/ObsReport/jupiter-impact.html

Wow. Sounds eerie

As reported on Twitter.
"Glenn Orton from JPL is imaging the Jupiter impact site now w/ the NASA Infrared Telescope & he's confirmed it's an impact!!"


Thud...

And now a mass extinction for free-floating ammonia-based life there.

Seriously, it's such an unique event

I knew it, Shoemaker-Levy 9 has come back to finish what she started in 1994. She couldn't destroy the plant, so she tries again!

Seriously though, that is pretty weird and scary.

HST image. I'd post here, but it's rather large, and shrinking it to fit would decrease detail.
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2009/23/


O_o WFP3 makes pretty pictures.

Wonder if it would be possible to detect SL9-type impacts on extrasolar giant planets... could get some very large impact velocities on super-Jupiters.

I'm pretty sure I've seen some suggestions to this effect in the past but can't recall where, or if it was just limited to impacts on/between terrestrial planets.

Here's an image of SL9 impact at 2.3 microns.



So a definite increase in brightness. But observing an exoplanet in the infrared, using today's telescopes, I would imagine takes a long exposure time, in which all brightness changes would be averaged out over the course of the exposure.

In my opinion, the superb site of this event sits in the fact it was first spotted by an Amateur Astronomer (Anthony Wesley). Reminds me of 2004 when Belgian Amateur Astronomer Tonny VanMunster detected exo-planets with commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) equipment. Make us wonder which role Amateur Astronomers might play in the near future of discovering exo-planets

Phill wrote:

Make us wonder which role Amateur Astronomers might play in the near future of discovering exo-planets

I'll get back to you on that.

Well so far there have been amateur observers contributing to transit searches. There have also been amateur astronomers involved in microlensing planet discoveries, e.g. OGLE-2005-BLG-071Lb. There's also a case where amateurs have detected the RV variations of Tau Boötis caused by the massive hot Jupiter.