Something Just Smacked Jupiter and Here's the Photo to Prove It

[Judi Lynn]

By Meghan Bartels 9 hours ago

- video at link -

Ouch, that looks painful!

A photograph captured by amateur astronomer Ethan Chappel appears to show an asteroid slamming into the gas giant Jupiter on Wednesday (Aug. 7). So far, astronomers are still waiting to see whether anyone else spotted the sudden flash, which was located over the planet's South Equatorial Belt.

"Today has felt completely unreal to me," Chappel wrote on Twitter. "Hoping someone else also recorded the impact to seal the deal." Chappel and fellow astrophotographer George Chappel post amazing views of the night sky at their website Chappel Astro.

There's plenty of precedent for such impacts at Jupiter: The planet's massive gravity tugs asteroids and other space debris toward itself. One group of astronomers has estimated an object 16.5 feet to 65 feet (5 to 20 meters) across slams into the planet between one and five times a month.

Those impacts are inevitable given the huge amount of rubble floating through the vastness of space. Astronomers have already identified more than 20,000 objects hanging around in Earth's neighborhood alone, and they know that tally is just a fraction of the total. Such space rocks hit Earth as well, and protecting Earth from them is the purview of a field known as planetary defense, but Jupiter takes more blows because of its mass.

More:
https://www.space.com/jupiter-impact-flash-photo-august-2019.html?utm_source=notification

[underpants]

1. As long as Uranus is okay

Come on! Uranus was just sitting there. 😆

[Bob Loblaw]

4. Isn't Uranus a gas giant?

nt

[underpants]

5. I am SO using that

Uranus

[Bob Loblaw]

6. I can always sniff out a good fart joke

when it reaches critical (m)ass.

[klook]

2. Everybody wants to take a shot at the big guy.

Thing is, Jupiter takes the hits and just keeps on spinning.

I’ve watched part of the Nova episode about Saturn and look forward to Jupiter next. The gas giants are truly fascinating. Thanks for the info and link.

[SCantiGOP]

8. Another solar system TV series a while back

Said that without Jupiter’s gravity sucking in so many comets and other space junk, life may have never advanced on Earth, since every few million years an extinction level event would reboot the process.

[klook]

10. Wow, amazing.

Our existence is so unlikely, yet here we are. Cosmic good luck, literally.

[AllaN01Bear]

3. anywhere i can find this story without being told to turn off my adblocker ?

[pecosbob]

7. The Mote in God's Eye

Humanity needs a good review of the parable of the mote and the beam about now....judge not, that ye be not judged.

[JohnnyRingo]

9. Thanx!

Now I feel even smaller and less significant. The powers of the universe have a way of doing that.

[progree]

11. And right now the moon and Jupiter are VERY close to each other in the middle of the southern

sky (central time zone).

Damn I can't see that, because it's cloudy in Minneapolis.

Jupiter is about in the middle of the southern sky (measured on an E-W basis) at sunset. It's the brightest object in the night sky these nights (and has been for months and will continue to be for months) with the exception of the moon, currently with a magnitude -2.4. (Compare to Sirius, the brightest star in the sky is -1.4 magnitude, (the more negative the magnitude, the brighter the object) ). Sirius, unfortunately isn't visible this time of year.

https://in-the-sky.org/skymap2.php

[yonder]

12. Remember the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 impacts +/-30 years ago?

It was very impressive and as I remember they were able to calculate the impact 2 or 3 years in advance of the event.

http://www.planetary.org/blogs/guest-blogs/2019/what-sl9-taught-us.html