Jupiter crashed into something big

Photo: John McKeon

On March 17th, amateur astronomers from Austria and Ireland captured the moment when Jupiter collided with a fairly large, unidentified object, presumably a comet or an asteroid. On the record, it looks just like a small flash, but if we take into account the size and attraction of Jupiter, then in our understanding, something truly catastrophic happened.

Collisions of cosmic bodies with Jupiter are not a rare phenomenon: the gas giant attracts / intersects with “someone solid” about once a year, but it is almost never possible to capture the moment of collision.





So far, neither amateur nor professional astronomers have any details of what happened. However, this record is a characteristic indicator of how far amateur optics has advanced and what it is capable of when interacting with astronomers from different corners of the earth among themselves. It is possible that at that moment someone else was watching Jupiter, and the data obtained by this person could shed more light on the collision that occurred.

Via engadget