On this date in 1994 - Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 Impacts Jupiter

On this date in 1994, the Hubble Space Telescope photographed the collision of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 with Jupiter.

From July 16 through July 22, 1994, pieces of an object designated as Comet P/Shoemaker-Levy 9 collided with Jupiter. This is the first collision of two solar system bodies ever to be observed, and the effects of the comet impacts on Jupiter's atmosphere have been simply spectacular and beyond expectations. Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 consisted of at least 21 discernable fragments with diameters estimated at up to 2 kilometers.

Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 was the ninth short-periodic comet discovered by Eugene and Carolyn Shoemaker and David Levy. It was first detected on a photograph taken on the night of March 24, 1993 with the 0.4-meter Schmidt telescope on Palomar Mountain in California. Subsequent observations were forthcoming from observers at the University of Hawaii, the Spacewatch telescope on Kitt Peak in Arizona and McDonald Observatory in Texas. These observations were used to demonstrate that the comet was in orbit about Jupiter, and had made a very close approach (within 1.4 Jupiter radii from Jupiter's center) on July 7, 1992. During this close approach, the unequal Jupiter gravitational attractions on the comet's near and far sides broke apart the fragile object.

This is an Image of Jupiter's cloudtops after the impact of the first fragment (A) of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 on 16 July. A violet (410 nm) filter of the Wide Field Camera 2 of the Hubble Space Telescope was used to make the image, which was taken at 5:32 EDT on 16 July 1994, 1.5 hours after the impact.

The impact site is visible as a dark streak and crescent-shaped feature, several thousand kilometers in size, in the lower left of the image. The comet entered the atmosphere from the south in the direction of the streak at an angle of about 45 degrees from the vertical. The crescent-shaped feature may be the remains of the plume that was ejected back along the entry path of the projectile. The features are probably dark particles from the comet, or possibly condensates dredged up from Jupiter's deep atmosphere.

Image Credit: STScI, NASA