Jupiter Impact 2009 |
Jupiter Impact 2009 |
Jul 19 2009, 08:13 PM
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#1
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The Poet Dude Group: Moderator Posts: 5551 Joined: 15-March 04 From: Kendal, Cumbria, UK Member No.: 60 |
Very interesting observation of a dark mark on Jupiter... it's starting to ripple out across Twitter...
http://www.irishastronomy.org/cms/forum?fu...;id=79644#79647 More info: http://www.acquerra.com.au/astro/ObsReport...ter-impact.html -------------------- |
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Jul 21 2009, 08:39 PM
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Senior Member Group: Moderator Posts: 3242 Joined: 11-February 04 From: Tucson, AZ Member No.: 23 |
Obviously, the quick comment that can be answered here (meaning not kooky), the impact scar is the ~ the size of Earth, NOT the impactor. Somehow there is some confusion about that among the commenters. The impactor was at best 1-2 km across, a faint object to observe from that distance. Not impossible by any means, we have observed outer moons of Jupiter that small, but we have no indication at this point that the impactor went through a period were it was temporarily captured by Jupiter, like SL9.
I think a lot of people in the general public extrapolate the fact that we have found nearly all the earth-orbit crossing asteroids of that size to mean that we have found all the objects in the Solar system of that size. That maybe another source of confusion. -------------------- &@^^!% Jim! I'm a geologist, not a physicist!
The Gish Bar Times - A Blog all about Jupiter's Moon Io |
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Jul 21 2009, 09:25 PM
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#3
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Member Group: Members Posts: 813 Joined: 8-February 04 From: Arabia Terra Member No.: 12 |
Interestingly, there was a paper published in 1997 which said that the mean interval between impacts of comets >0.3km on Jupiter is on the order of 500 years. I guess the real figure might be a lot less than that.
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