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Something May Have Just Hit Jupiter
The blog of Anthony Wesley, an Australian amateur astronomer, has what may be the first photos of a recent comet or asteroid impact on Jupiter, near the south pole. These photos are 11 hours old. The ones at the bottom of the page show three small dark spots in addition to the main dark mark. The Bad Astronomy blog picked up the story a few hours later — but cautions that what we're seeing may not be an impact event. This is all reminiscent of the closely watched impact of comet Shoemaker-Levy on Jupiter in 1994.
If it is an impact, then what else is there to compare it to? According to the blogger, there was no sign whatever of the event just 2 days earlier. Can a storm arise that quickly out of nothing? In any case, it seems likely that they will soon be able to determine if it is an impact or not.
Or, as the german philosopher Schopenhauer famously put it:
Dilletants! Dilletants! - so are called those, who are occupied by a Science or an Art out of love to it, per il loro diletto, with disdain by those who do it for profit, because they love only the money which can be earned by it. This disdain is based on the dastard conviction, that nobody would ever seriously take on a subject if not distress, famine, or another greed urges it. The public is of the same spirit and thus has the same opinion: from here comes his respect for "people of the trade", and his mistrust of amateurs. In reality for the amateur the subject is the goal, for the man of the trade as himself it is only means. Only he will carry on with earnest who is immediately interested in the subject and who is occupied with it out of love. From those, not from the paid servants, the greatest has ever started.
(Sorry for my bad english. I am an amateur after all ;) )