Aug 222010
Now that an amateur with some spare change and the willingness to spend time and money can produce better astronomical observations than most professional astronomers of only a few years ago, it seems like people are seeing Jupiter get whacked by asteroids and comets on a monthly basis. An amateur in Japan just caught an impact flash, posted it to Youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/user/planetsocblog#p/a/u/0/jIkr86xKcwQ
http://www.universetoday.com/71835/jupiter-gets-smacked-yet-again/
While it’s true that Jupiter is big and massive, it still seems that it’s gettign hit a lot.
8 Responses to “Jupiter clobbered *again*”
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Considering all the objects that it’s swept out of the solar system, it makes one realize that early on in its history this place must have been a real shooting gallery.
Wouldn’t it be nice if we had an orbiting probe around Jupiter… and while I’m here, Uranus and Neptune could use their first dedicated spacecraft, too. sight
As someone suggested, perhaps all these impacts are ranging shots.
How long have we had all this stuff watching Jupiter? Is this a recent development in impacts, or have we just been unaware of impacts?
Must always be careful about jumping to conclusions, though. As you mention, amateur astronomy has really come into its own and expanded over the past 10-15 years, so it is only naturally that we will be observing events that previously went unobserved. That’s why I would urge extreme caution about suggesting that impacts are becoming more frequent. It’s a sensationalist, if not ridiculous, suggestion that does not have much basis in fact, at this time.
It’s been three days since the impact, so it will be interesting to see if any “scar” like last summer is visible. I don’t recall any scar being visible from the impact this past June, though.
I think we’re finally noticing it happening. The DSP early warning satts found that airborne detonations of metors are actually fairly common on this planet. We just never were looking in the right directions at the right time.
> urge extreme caution about suggesting that impacts are becoming more frequent.
I don’t imagine anyone (intelligent) seriously suggesting that. But today you can bet there’s a good chance that at any particular moment, someone, somewhere, is recording video of Jupiter. Ten years ago? Maybe not. Twenty? Probably not. Thirty? Definitely not.
The June meteor was found to have burned up high in the Jovian atmosphere without leaving an impact scar in the clouds.
It probably just a case of more folks seeing things, but didn’t we also have two asteroids that collided with each other not long ago? I wonder how often that happens. After each of those types of collisions, you could have more debris available.