Another Jupiter impact? Options

[Floyd]

I was sure you all had inside information—I'm totally disillusioned

I'm not sure anyone who posts at UMSF is patient—sort of antithetical to being curious:

Curious / Eager -------------------- vs ------------------- Disengaged / Dead
Impatient / Intense --------------------------------------Patient / Clueless

Are we there yet

[Guest_Sunspot_*]

HST image released, no sign of the impact.
http://www.hubblesite.org/newscenter/archi...s/2010/20/full/

But look at all those dark spots popping up at the bottom of the SEB!!!!

[tolis]

I wonder if the possibility of this being a very bright bolt of lightning has been looked at and rejected.
To the unititiated, it is not obvious that a bolt of lightning of this magnitude (ie optical energy) would be more unlikely than
a fireball of the same energy.

[Hungry4info]

Lightning has been observed on Jupiter before, but only by spacecraft that are both there, and looking at the planet's night side.
Jovian lightning simply isn't strong eough to view from across the solar system (with current technology at least), and especially in the illuminated hemisphere.

[Toma B]

I'm having trouble with seeing images on HST site.
Can anybody post that new image of Jupiter here at UMSF or link to anywhere else?

Thank you!

OK I find it somewhere.

http://www.spacetelescope.org/news/heic1010/

That works for me.


This post has been edited by Toma B: Jun 16 2010, 04:47 PM

[tolis]

Lightning has been observed on Jupiter before, but only by spacecraft that are both there, and looking at the planet's night side.
Jovian lightning simply isn't strong eough to view from across the solar system (with current technology at least), and especially in the illuminated hemisphere.

Do you know of a paper or report where someone has done the sums and concluded that it would simply be too faint?
Remember, Jupiter is 5 times as far away from the sun as the Earth, hence its surface brightness, given the same
albedo, should be 25 times fainter than that of the Earth.

The answer to the question is not obvious. We need a jovian lightning expert..

[Phil Stooke]

How about this?

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/scien..._missingdebris/

It doesn't give you the math, but clearly experts have thought about it.

Phil

[Hungry4info]

IIRC, the they first attempted to image lightning on Jupiter's night side with Galileo, they did not set the exposure right and the light reflecting off Io oversaturated the images.

[tolis]

How about this?


It doesn't give you the math, but clearly experts have thought about it.

Phil

Phil,

I'll buy that. Thanks.

Tolis.

[john_s]

IIRC, the they first attempted to image lightning on Jupiter's night side with Galileo, they did not set the exposure right and the light reflecting off Io oversaturated the images.

Actually those moonlit images successful detected lightning- see here. There are other Galileo lightning images too, in addition to those from Voyager, New Horizons and perhaps (I'm not sure) Cassini.

John

[stevesliva]

It doesn't give you the math, but clearly experts have thought about it.

Eh. I think someone probably figured you can't see garden-variety lightning because it would have been seen already as it is so frequent. I think some people who study transient luminous events (sprites/jets/elves) might think it looks interesting, although it's extremely bright, a bit long-lived and immensely large. A TLE's worth thinking about, but the only way you'd convince people that this was one was to see more of them. Doesn't look like plain old lightning.

[nprev]

Frankly, you'd also think that TLEs would occur far more frequently if this event in fact was one. Jupiter is under almost constant observation by amateurs with professional-grade equipment; we should have seen a few more of these over the past five years or so, at least.

Still, it's certainly valid to explore reasonable alternative explanations for this observation.

[Bill Harris]

I'm still thinking that cohesive rocky body, behaving like a rifle bullet and punching through the upper cloud deck and disintegrating at a lower level, is the most reasonable explanation. Remember, the SEB has faded and we are seeing a lot of obscuring high-altitude cirrus clouds.

--Bill

[nprev]

Fresh off the presses of Volcanopele's Gish Bar Times: another probable Jupiter impact observed yesterday! Story & links:

http://www.gishbartimes.org/2010/08/meteor...n-jupiters.html

EDIT: Not yesterday...20 Aug around 1822 UTC.

[volcanopele]

Well, yesterday-ish. It was recorded Saturday morning in Japan.