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Amateur Astronomers Spot Jovian Blast

Posted by timothy on from the that-is-awesome dept.

RocketAcademy writes "Spaceweather.com reports an explosion on Jupiter, which was detected by two amateur astronomers. According to Spaceweather.com, the event occurred at 11:35 Universal Time on September 10. Dan Peterson of Racine, Wisconsin, observing through a 12-inch Meade telescope, observed a white flash lasting for 1.5-2 seconds. George Hall of Dallas, Texas was capturing a video of Jupiter at the time, which also captured the event. It's believed that the explosion was due to a comet or small asteroid collision. Similar events were observed in the past, in June and August 2010."

5 of 86 comments (clear)

  1. Actual video please? by slagheap · · Score: 3, Informative

    The linked video is to a very cheesy still image montage about comet/asteroid impacts, and only shows this recent Jupiter impact as a still screenshot of the video playing on someone's computer.

    Anybody have a better link? At least to a real still of the event?

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    First against the wall when the revolution comes
    1. Re:Actual video please? by slagheap · · Score: 4, Informative

      Ah, here it is... linked from within the spaceweather.com link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/19299984@N08/7976507568

      --
      First against the wall when the revolution comes
  2. Thank you Jupiter! by infidel_heathen · · Score: 3, Informative

    If Jupiter wasn't sweeping up all those comets and asteroids, we'd be getting hit by them.

  3. Re:random thoughts... by Chris+Burke · · Score: 3, Informative

    It's been going 38,000 mph for 35 years. And it's just now leaving our local solar system.

    Another stat I love: How many man-hours of effort have been put into determining safe courses for our probes to pass through the main asteroid belt, in total over all outer-solar-system probes?

    Zero.

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  4. Re:Going to try to spot the scars by cyberchondriac · · Score: 3, Informative
    There's no simple answer to that question. What constitutes a "decent" scope? Weeelll..

    A couple of things to know:
    * Aperture (thus ability to gather light) is more important than magnification.
    * There are essentially 3 kinds of scopes:
    1) Refractor (classic design)
    2) Newtonian reflector (more affordable). Newtonians are generally less money and give you more bang for the buck, and Dobsonian Newtonians are even better bargains, though a dob can't track objects as they can't use an equatorial mount. I have an 8" dob, and a small 80mm refractor, but what I'd really like is a
    3) Cassegrain: , which is like an optically "folded" newtonian - they're small, light, and powerful, but not as cheap as newtonians.
    You can look here for starters: http://www.telescope.com/ (Orion)

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