Well, I haven't had much time to blog recently (and June doesn't look much better, but I will try) but this story is too good not to do a quick post on. Jupiter has been smacked again by something...a comet or asteroid. Again, it has been discovered by amateurs. First reported by Anthony Wesley and confirmed by Christopher Go, they each got video of the event. Here is a still from Wesley's video.
Pretty prominent little bright spot there. You can watch the video here.
This just happened today, so it's still a developing story...stay tuned.UPADTE: The video has been posted to Youtube, so here it is.
Reprinted with permission from the Half-Astrophysicist Blog.
Posts
5 comments:
It's a huge planet, it can handle some abuse...
That's a short video. I wanna see plumes.
Unfortunately, plumes are hard to detect from half a billion miles away with an amateur telescope!
This is really a field where amateurs are going to dominate astronomy. Big observatories don't monitor Jupiter all the time, but lots of amateurs spend a lot of time imaging it. Now that the equipment available to amateurs allows them to do things that would have made pros jealous when I was young, I expect to see more of these.
I told my kids "Ease up! You're pumping up that potato gun too much!"
Now look what they've done!
Thank goodness for our big protecting neighbor with all its gravity!
Post a Comment