Impact on Jupiter! (from Hubble Space Telescope - edm)

Discovered by Australian amateur astronomer Anthony Wesley on Sunday, July 19, 2009, the spot was created when a small object plunged into Jupiter's atmosphere and disintegrated. The only other time in history such a feature has been seen on Jupiter was 15 years ago.

"This is strikingly similar to the comet Shoemaker Levy 9 that impacted Jupiter in July 1994" said team member Keith Noll of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md.

"Since we believe this magnitude of impact is rare, we are very fortunate to see it with Hubble" added Amy Simon-Miller of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. She explained that the details seen in the Hubble view shows a lumpiness to the debris plume caused by turbulence in Jupiter's atmosphere. The spot is presently twice the length of the United States.

Simon-Miller estimated that the diameter of the object that slammed into Jupiter was at least the size of several football fields. The force of the explosion on Jupiter was thousands of times more powerful than the suspected comet or asteroid that exploded over the Tunguska River Valley in Siberia in June 1908.

The WFC3, installed by the STS-125 astronauts in May, is not yet fully calibrated. So while it is possible to obtain celestial images, the camera's full power cannot yet be realized for most observations. The WFC3 can still return meaningful science images that will complement the Jupiter pictures being taken with ground-based telescopes.

This is a Natural Color image of Jupiter as seen in Visible Light.

Credit: NASA, ESA, and H. Hammel (Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.), and the Jupiter Impact Team

The members of the Jupiter Impact Team are:

Dr. Heidi B. Hammel (Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.)
Dr. Amy Simon-Miller (NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.)
Dr. Keith S. Noll (Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.)
Dr. Michael H. Wong (Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.)
Prof. John T. Clarke (Boston University, Boston, Mass.)
Prof. Imke de Pater (University of California, Berkeley, Calif.)
Dr. Glenn S. Orton (Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.)
Dr. Agustin Sanchez-Lavega (University of the Basque Country, Spain)

CONTACT
Dwayne Brown
HQ, Washington
202-358-1726
dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov

Ray Villard
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.
410-338-4514
villard@stsci.edu