Something Has Just Hit Jupiter:

Space Weather News for June 3, 2010
spaceweather.com...

SOMETHING HAS JUST HIT JUPITER: Veteran amateur astronomers Anthony Wesley of Australia and Christopher Go of the Philippines have independently observed an impact event on Jupiter. The strike occurred at 20:31 UT on June 3rd and produced a bright flash of light in the giant planet's cloudtops. Visit spaceweather.com... for images and video.

Mod Edit: All Caps – Please Review This Link.


[edit on 3/6/2010 by Mirthful Me]

That is pretty big



[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/38fcf353eb70.jpg[/atsimg]

Would sure as hell clean up Earth




[edit on 3-6-2010 by FermiFlux]

Great catch, OP! Better Jupiter takes a hit rather than Earth.

I wonder if they'll be able to figure out the size of the impacting body from the debris cloud?

also, the second brown belt went missing a month ago...the seb south equitorial belt which has always been visible even with binocs....this has everyone baffled. now you find this....

perhaps they are testing space nukes for target practice

a flash though what causes a flash like that

Probably nothing but a little bitty 50 mile long asteroid entering Jupiter's atmosphere. Being somewhat denser than ours it might make entry burns even more spectacular than they would be on earth (which I don't care to see, thank you!)

Originally posted by Asktheanimals
Probably nothing but a little bitty 50 mile long asteroid entering Jupiter's atmosphere. Being somewhat denser than ours it might make entry burns even more spectacular than they would be on earth (which I don't care to see, thank you!)

Someone just posted a thread stating this impact was the size of Europe?!

Any confirmation on that?

Impact on Jupiter shows explosion the size of Europe

www.abovetopsecret.com...



I started a thread on this too. Then someone brought to my attention this thread. We need to consolidate them all because this is pretty big news (I think) and I don't want to miss any opinions.

Jupiter the giant vacuum cleaner of the solar system is the reason we have such a quiet inner solar system.

Jupiter’s gravity acts as a well into which much matter falls, this is not the mystery surrounding this gas giant however...

The real mystery is that in all other observable solar systems where there is a gas giant, the planet has spiralled inward wiping out any forming planets early in the formation of the solar system...

So how did Jupiter form in such a stable orbit???

Also not sure if it’s been mentioned somewhere else here on ATS but recently Jupiter lost its bottom red stripe..

Jupiter before

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/c551da32f304.jpg[/atsimg]

Jupiter After...

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/039986eea079.jpg[/atsimg]

Jupiter loses one of its stripes and scientists are stumped as to why

Jupiter has lost one of its iconic red stripes and scientists are baffled as to why. The largest planet in our solar system is usually dominated by two dark bands in its atmosphere, with one in the northern hemisphere and one in the southern hemisphere.

However, the most recent images taken by amateur astronomers have revealed the lower stripe known as the Southern Equatorial Belt has disappeared leaving the southern half of the planet looking unusually bare. The band was present in at the end of last year before Jupiter ducked behind the Sun on its orbit. However, when it emerged three months later the belt had disappeared.

I wonder if an unnoticed large impact could create such a disturbance as to change the gianormous weather pattern??

All the best people,

Korg.

Well Jupiter isnt called the goalkeeper for nothing

Originally posted by GBP/JPY
also, the second brown belt went missing a month ago...the seb south equitorial belt which has always been visible even with binocs....this has everyone baffled. now you find this....

Actually, no one is baffled. This happens regularly... I think the last time was in 2007. The Southern Equatorial Belt always re-emerges from underneath the ammonia cirrus cloud that is currently covering it.

Orton says the belt may not be gone, just hidden under higher clouds.

"It's possible," he said on the NASA website, "that some 'ammonia cirrus' has formed on top of the SEB, hiding the SEB from view."

On Earth, NASA says, white wispy cirrus clouds are made of ice crystals. On Jupiter, the same sort of clouds can form, but the crystals are made of ammonia instead of water.

Source

IRM

reply to post by Korg Trinity


Without Jupiter we would be in a lot of trouble. It does make you wonder if there was some "event" in the early formation of our solar system that put us in our current config.

Perhaps our solar system was "groomed" to support a carbon based life evolution experiment?

reply to post by Korg Trinity


That's a very interesting observation. To disrupt the powerful weather of jupiter it would have had to be a rather massive impact. Jupiter has been taking impacts for a long time on our behalf, maybe we should have a day to celebrate such a great planet

reply to post by ddarkangle2bad


I posted this news in another thread that has now been closed, since I didn't realise you had posted it before I did. Below is a copy from that thread:
---------------------------------------------------------

Something hit Jupiter yesterday. Australian astronomer Antony Wesley reported the event and another astronomer, Christopher Go, later confirmed the impact in a video captured from the Philipines. If this impact had happened on Earth it would have eradicated an area the size of Europe according to Norwegian national broadcasting, NRK. See links below.

Video: astro.christone.net...

Source: astro.christone.net... (Christopher Go's website.
Source #2: www.nrk.no... (in Norwegian)

Originally posted by ImaginaryReality1984
reply to post by Korg Trinity

 

That's a very interesting observation. To disrupt the powerful weather of jupiter it would have had to be a rather massive impact. Jupiter has been taking impacts for a long time on our behalf, maybe we should have a day to celebrate such a great planet

Woow now that's a cool thought

What about June the 5th?? Hang on a minute that's tomorrow.... not enough time to get the word out

Korg.

I think I read somewhere a while ago about a nuke (12megaton?) who was/is supposed to hit jupiter.
At the time it was just speculation about a black op I think, but it was the first thing I thought about when I read this. If it was a large object, they would have found it before this happened, right?

Right? :O

Will dig the dirt for something more solid...

Edit: Scratch that. I probably read the Galileo speculations, and that one crashed in 2007.

[edit on 4-6-2010 by BonesTruth]

Originally posted by BonesTruth
I think I read somewhere a while ago about a nuke (12megaton?) who was/is supposed to hit jupiter.
At the time it was just speculation about a black op I think, but it was the first thing I thought about when I read this. If it was a large object, they would have found it before this happened, right?

Right? :O

Will dig the dirt for something more solid...

Quite simply no, no they wouldn't. Jupiter has been hit by objects before and we only realised after we observed massive flashes from the impacts. The simple truth is that the sky is massive and trying to track it all is a very difficult task. Projects are ongoing to map the sky but there is every chance a random rock can be thrown toward us and we will only find out when the sky is filled with dust.

As for the bomb, well theres a bit of science fiction where Jupiter is turned into a second sun with a bomb, i can't imagine a purpose of really doing such a thing, at least not while we have a nice yellow star heating us up already. If Jupiter could be turned into a star then Earth would be roasted pretty quickly.

wow thats two major impacts on Jupiter in how many years ? does that mean Earth is due for "one" statistically speaking

reply to post by paradiselost333


Fortunately, we are protected from most asteroid impacts etc. by the Moon and the larger planets like Jupiter and also the Sun. The Shoemaker-Levi impact was not too long ago, are we seeing an increased frequency of impact with highly energetic objects in the solar system, and especially planet Jupiter? Quite scary stuff if you ask me.

[edit on 4/6/2010 by Neo Christian Mystic]

Originally posted by Korg Trinity
The real mystery is that in all other observable solar systems where there is a gas giant, the planet has spiralled inward wiping out any forming planets early in the formation of the solar system...

The answer is contained in one word from your post: "Observable"

The technique for finding extrasolar planets favors finding massive gas giants in close orbit around stars. The astronomers measure the gravitational influence of the planet on the star over time. The closer the planet is to the star, the greater the influence, so the easier it is to detect.

Also, they measure the effect over time, and close orbits have a shorter period so the data shows the wobble more quickly. Scientists need to see several orbital cycles to be sure the effect is real and the planet is there. This is easy if the planet orbits its sun in a year or two. On the other hand, Jupiter takes 12 years to go around our sun, and we've only been using this technique for less than 20 years. Thus, if we were observing a star that had a gas giant with the same period as Jupiter, we would not yet have enough data to confirm its existence.

We need more time and more data from sensitive instruments to tell whether close-orbiting gas giants really are more common than the far-orbiting ones, or if it's just an illusion caused by the measurment technique.

It's kind of like when you go to a party: You notice the hotties first, then you might notice the wallflowers later (if at all).