Jupiter struck by ANOTHER cometary body in 2009

Here's the link:

Impact mark on Jupiter, 19th July 2009

Interesting, to say the least. Did anyone else hear about this?


I just found NASA's release on this. Seems that the HUBBLE Space Telescope took pictures of this too.

[edit on 14-1-2010 by DarkspARCS]

Yeah it was in the news at the time.

There was a lot of debate on what it was though and a lot of people disagreed.

If I am remembering correctly , that is.

Sure. Isn't this the one that made a few people posit that Jupiter isn't a gas giant?

Things hit Jupiter all the time. It is a huge huge huge gravity source.

I think that if it weren't for Jupiter, Earth today wouldn't exist as it does now.

We'd probably not even exist!

If anybody interested in seeing infa-red pictures of the scar which, according to NASA, appeared between 3 and 9 a.m. PDT (6 a.m. and noon EDT) on the 20th of July, 2009.

www.jpl.nasa.gov...

reply to post by DarkspARCS


I recall hearing about it too.

As others have pointed out, Jupiter is massive, and because of this and it's gravitational field, it sweeps up allot of junk that might otherwise end up hitting us. I also agree, that we probably would not be here today if it was not for Jupiter.

There is also an almost endless supply of comets and other debris out there, orbiting our Sun, so combine that with Jupiter's massive gravitational pull, and it;s gardly surprising that it gets hit once in a while by a large object.

Of course, the Sun is the ultimate gravitational force in the solar system, and swallows up bits of comets all the time, as well as the occasional whole one. There was a recent thread about an event like this here.