Another news flash from Jupiter

[n2doc]

A Japanese amateur astronomer witnessed a flash on Jupiter over the weekend - less than three months after similar blip, apparently caused by a meteor fall, created a sensation among astronomers. The event suggests that the giant planet may be experiencing shooting stars more frequently than scientists thought, and that it's just a case of looking in the right place at the right time.

That's what Masayuki Tashikawa was doing early Saturday morning Japan time (around 18:22 GMT or 2:22 p.m. ET Friday), when he had his video-equipped telescope pointed in Jupiter's direction from Kumamoto city on the island of Kyushu. In the 4-second video clip above, the second-long flash can be seen toward the lower left, about halfway through the clip.

"I took it for noise signals at first, but I was really surprised because the image of the light remained on the video," Tashikawa told Kyodo News.

The phenomenon looks like a repeat of the flash spotted by longtime Jupiter-watchers Anthony Wesley and Christopher Go on June 3. Their observations, combined with follow-up looks by the Hubble Space Telescope, led astronomers to conclude that the flash was caused not by an exploding asteroid or comet, but instead by a fiery meteor that didn't leave a lasting mark on Jupiter's cloud tops.

more with video
http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/08/22/4950910-another-news-flash-from-jupiter

[MilesColtrane]

1. Or, the flashes could be caused by the ships opening wormholes as they exit the base...

that's just under cover of the atmosphere.


:tinfoilhat:

[DJ13]

2. Nah, the Klingons stick close to Uranus

[rfranklin]

3. Nah, that's the Republican assholes...

They like to be in a friendly crowd.

[Angry Dragon]

4. My vote would be for a Borg base

[Fumesucker]

5. The very best amateur planetary photography is done with video cameras these days..

You can integrate the video with custom programs such as Registax and greatly increase the signal to noise ratio as well as the resolution, it's a form of time domain adaptive optics if you will. Also there are a lot of computer controlled telescopes now in amateur hands with more being added every day.

This basically means that there are far more video cameras connected to telescopes pointed at the planets than there have been in the past, Jupiter has an enormous gravity well and it's not at all surprising that it would get hit by a lot of cosmic debris.

I think we can expect to hear of meteor(ite) strikes on Jupiter on a fairly regular basis now.

http://www.astronomie.be/registax/