Jupiter Gets Bombarded on July 20 as World Remembers Apollo 11

In the morning hours of July 20 between 6 a.m. and noon EDT, something big struck Jupiter. Thanks to Australian amateur astronomer, Anthony Wesley, the NASA telescopes in Hawaii were able to photograph the impact of the object striking Jupiter's South Polar Region. Wesley tipped off NASA about the Jupiter bombardment and scientists were lucky to be in the right place at the right time to photograph the impact using NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility at the top of Mauna Kea, Hawaii.

The bizarre planetary event came on the 40^th anniversary of Apollo 11 astronauts landing on the Moon and exactly 15 years since the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 struck Jupiter in 1994. Scientists say it could be another comet that struck Jupiter, but they are not sure at this point. They will be studying more photographs showing particles and debris in Jupiter's atmosphere and a warming of Jupiter's troposphere.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California that is managed by the California Institute of Technology, used the Hawaiian telescope facility to get the best shots of the Jupiter impact. NASA telescope operator William Golisch, has been praised for his extraordinary movement of multiple telescopes that captured the photographs during the Jupiter impact. Some scientists say these are the most exciting pictures they have seen in five years of watching the planets.

The Jupiter impact also comes on the heels of NASA concerns during recent space shuttle missions that the spacecraft would be in danger of being hit by space debris. The astronauts of the space shuttle Endeavor mission STS-127 are getting ready to return to Earth after installing a front porch on the International Space Station. The front porch will be used with robot arms for experiments in the exposed outer environment. The mission will also return Japanese astronaut and scientist, Koichi Wakata, to Earth.

Jupiter is usually the second brightest planet in the sky after Venus, and is brighter than most stars. Jupiter is the 5^th planet from the sun and it would take more than 1,000 planet Earth's to fill up Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system. In July 1994, when 21 fragments of the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet hit Jupiter, the impact was so strong that debris was thrown into the air that filled the atmosphere with an area larger than Earth. Some of the largest fragments to hit Jupiter in 1994 were estimated to be about 2.5 miles in diameter. You can still see the scars on Jupiter's surface from the 1994 collision with Shoemaker-Levy 9.

Sources:

NASA

New NASA Images Indicate Object Hits Jupiter

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/jup-20090720.html

NASA Jupiter Factshttp://www.nasa.gov/worldbook/jupiter_worldbook.html