Posted on 07/21/2009 6:07:43 AM PDT by Red in Blue PA
PASADENA, California — A large comet or asteroid has slammed into Jupiter, creating an impact site the size of Earth, pictures by an Australian amateur astronomer show.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory confirmed the discovery using its large infrared telescope at the summit of Mauna Kea in Hawaii, said computer programer Anthony Wesley, 44, who discovered the impact zone while stargazing at home.
News of Wesley's find on a backyard 14.5-inch reflecting telescope has stunned the astronomy world, with scientists saying the impact will last only days more.
Wesley said it took him 30 minutes to realize a dark spot rotating in Jupiter's clouds on July 19 was actually the first impact seen by astronomers since a comet collided with the giant planet in July 1994.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
“Well I can state with absolute certainty some day we will be hit by a massive object. It is equally probable that it will be tomorrow, or 100,000 years from now or 1 million years from now. But it will happen.”
When you put it that way, it sounds pretty scary. Another way to look at it is that there is a one in 20 billion chance (give or take) that it will hit tomorrow, there is a one in 20 billion chance that it will hit 100,000 years from now, etc.
One way to look at it is you have statistically the same chance of dying from an asteroid/comet impact as you do of dying in an commercial airliner. Small but real....
If the object were “earth sized”, within 50% or the mass of the Earth, the orbital periods of the Galiean satellites will change quite noticably, by about 0.3%. The periods of the Galiean satellites were one of the first accurate indications of the speed of light. Their crossing of Jupiter’s face appeared later or sooner depending on the Earth-Jupiter distance. Roemer took advantage of this fact in 1676 to publish the first reasonable estimate of the speed of light.
I keep thinking the entire gulf looks like a crater.
Bush’s fault.
“One way to look at it is you have statistically the same chance of dying from an asteroid/comet impact as you do of dying in an commercial airliner. Small but real....”
If this is true, I don’t find it very encouraging lol. I think I liked your other comparison better, as scary it was.
Professional astronomers are typically dedicated to studying very specific things in space, and most of their time and energy is focused on those things. They don't usually have time to scan the heavens at random, looking for something unusual like this.
This is why, for example, most comets are discovered by (and named after) amateurs -- not professionals. The process of finding a comet in the night sky usually involves long, painstaking periods of time where an observer scans the night sky looking for something out of the ordinary -- like a small, blurry object in a constellation, that doesn't show up on sky charts. The best tools for this sort of thing are smaller telescopes with wide fields of vision -- because it would take forever to cover the entire night sky with one of those giant telescopes you see in an observatory.
See #67.
Thank you for the insights
This was a comet that made an impact the size of planet earth? I thought it was an asteroid
No wonder all the money we spend on NEO tracking didn’t spot it. Guess we’re not watching our solar system neighbor planets. since making them wobble might affect us, too. I thought that changed after 1994, my bad
I'm not so sure about that. Isn't Pluto's moon (Charon) about 50% of Pluto's size?
Silly aliens. They don’t know humans very well at all. You know the first thing that humanity collectively asked was, “Why? What’s on Europa?”
It's amazing how many things in space are discovered by people who have a lot of time on their hands and spend it outside at night looking up at the sky!
Remember the Columbia disaster a few years ago -- when observers on the ground in the western U.S. reported something unusual about the shuttle on its landing approach long before the NASA folks in Florida knew that something was wrong?
No, but you should see the way the rivers on the Chessapeake all bend towards the same point. There’s a huge impact crater just north of Norfolk.
Computer technology too, oh and inventions in general. No FRriend, the garage may still be the most important lab in the world.
— FRegards ....
[PS — I stayed away a long time, huh?]
Professor: "I'm sorry, Fry, but astronomers renamed Uranus in 2620 to end that stupid joke once and for all."
Fry: "Oh. What's it called now?"
Professor: "Urectum."
Amen. I’ve been reading “Why the Universe is the Way it is?” by Dr. Hugh Ross — and it’s a pretty remarkable spot in the Cosmos that we occupy.
LOL. Futurama. Classic.
remarkable... perhaps even “specially Created”...
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