[meteorite-list] Amateur astronomers observe asteroids colliding with Jupiter
Robin Whittle
rw at firstpr.com.au
Sun Sep 15 23:11:54 EDT 2013
Here is a recent press release with a few small photos:
http://www.europlanet-eu.org/epsc2013/media-press/76-epsc2013/media-press/627-fireballs-in-jupiter-s-atmosphere-observed-by-amateur-astronomers
The giant planet Jupiter - a big target with tremendous gravitational
attraction - gets hit far more often than the Earth, and these
collisions are much faster, happen at a minimum speed of 60
kilometers per second.
Amateur astronomers observing Jupiter with video cameras have been
able to observe three of these collisions in the last 3 years and a
detailed report of these collisions has been presented at the
European Planetary Science Congress at UCL this week by Ricardo Hueso
(University of the Basque Country, Spain).
"Our analysis shows that Jupiter could be impacted by objects around
10 meters across between 12 and 60 times per year," Hueso says. "That
is around 100 times more often than the Earth."
The study, a broad collaboration between professional and amateur
astronomers, also includes detailed simulations of objects entering
Jupiter’s atmosphere and disintegrating at temperatures above
10,000 C and observations from telescopes such as the Hubble Space
Telescope or the Very Large Telescope of the impact area taken only
tens of hours after the impact. Despite observing the planet soon
after the impact, Hubble and the VLT saw no signature of the
disintegrated objects, showing that such impacts are very brief
events.
I couldn't find a paper or a presentation, but there is a paper - PDF
available - co-authored by Ricardo Hueso from 2010 which has photos from
a Jupiter impact:
Astrophysical Journal Letters , 721:L129–L133, 2010 October 1
FIRST EARTH-BASED DETECTION OF A SUPERBOLIDE ON JUPITER
R. Hueso et al.
http://iopscience.iop.org/2041-8205/721/2/L129
- Robin
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