Jupiter

Photo taken on April 16, 2006

I haven't done an educational post in quite awhile. Since I'm in summer camp teaching mode and this is a particularly cool event, I thought I'd share. I took most of this info from a news release on the Hubble website. Incidentally if you haven't visited the HubbleSite, you should check it out - especially the photo gallery.

On July 19, 2009 an Australian amateur astronomer, Anthony Wesley, observed a spot on the surface of Jupiter. The spot was created when a small object plunged into Jupiter's atmosphere and disintegrated. A similar phenomena was observed 15 years ago, but there is no other recorded history of such an event. Telescopes around the world have been focused on what is now a new, expanding spot on the planet's surface.

It looks like NASA got the Hubble up and running just in time. They were in the process of calibrating the telescope after recent lens upgrades and other refurbishments when the impact occurred and they interrupted the checkout to aim the telescope at the spot. A team of astronomers is now using the Hubble to study the event.

The spot was caused by the impact of a comet or an asteroid and is changing daily in the planet's clouds. According to Amy Simon-Miller of NASA, this magnitude of impact is rare. She estimated that the diameter of the object that slammed into Jupiter was at least the size of several football fields. The force of the explosion was thousands of times more powerful than the suspected comet or asteroid that exploded over the Tunguska River Valley in Siberia in June 1908. Details seen in the Hubble view show a lumpiness to the debris plume caused by turbulence in Jupiter's atmosphere. The spot is currently twice the length of the United States.

The Hubble picture, taken on July 23, is the sharpest visible-light picture taken of the impact feature. The observations were made with Hubble's new camera, the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3). The WFC3, installed by astronauts in May, is not yet fully calibrated. It is possible to obtain celestial images, but the camera's full power cannot yet be realized for most observations. The WFC3 can still return meaningful science images that will complement the Jupiter pictures being taken with ground-based telescopes. This is a natural color image of Jupiter as seen in visible light.

Note: If you pause the slideshow, you can advance the images manually so you can spend as much time as you like looking at them.