SnapGlow.TV: Modern Gems Galore! All you would-be Galileos, take note. On Sunday, an Australian amateur used his homemade telescope to discover a new spot on Jupiter - a finding of cosmic importance.
Using two of the world's largest telescopes, astronomers from NASA and the University of California Berkeley announced yesterday that the spot was real and probably got there when a giant piece of ice or rock slammed into the fifth planet from the sun.
Scientists say telescopes around the world will be turning to Jupiter this week to watch the Earth-sized scar. The Hubble Space Telescope is scheduled to turn to Jupiter tomorrow.
The discoverer, Anthony Wesley, 44, told British and Australian news organizations that he observes Jupiter about 20 hours per week from his rural home near Canberra, though sometimes he multitasks. That night he had been going back and forth from his backyard to his house to watch golf on TV.
This event is the second time anyone has observed another planet getting hit. The first time was exactly 15 years ago this week when a comet called Shoemaker-Levy 9 broke into fragments that slammed into Jupiter, leaving marks resembling a chain of pearls.
News of this latest impact traveled around the world fast. By Sunday evening, astronomer Leigh Fletcher of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said he had gotten an e-mail alerting him to the findings. He said it's no big surprise that an amateur got it first - especially someone like Wesley.
"He's part of a talented group of amateurs who regularly observe Jupiter to monitor cloud patterns and look for strange things," Fletcher said.
Amateurs can often do more systematic monitoring than is possible with big observatories, said UC Berkeley astronomer Mike Wong. "We may get to a telescope a few times a year."
By luck, Fletcher said one of his few times came up on Monday, the day after the big find Down Under. He and colleague Glenn Orton observed Jupiter by using NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility atop Mauna Kea on Hawaii's big island.
"We were all crowded around the computer screen extremely excited about what we might see," he said. As the image came up, he said, there was a bright feature - showing that material had been lofted to extreme altitudes.
"It had all the hallmarks of an impact scar," which may dissipate in a few weeks or months, Fletcher said.
The scientists say the damage was done by either a comet or an asteroid between 100 meters and a kilometer (.62 miles) across - comparable to one of the comet fragments that hit 15 years ago.
These objects are tiny compared with Jupiter, said astronomer Harold Weaver of Johns Hopkins University. "But still they're causing scars on Jupiter on the order of the size of Earth."
Such an impact could clearly do some damage here. In the way of reassurance, Weaver said, large comets and asteroids are much more likely to hit Jupiter because it's 320 times as massive as Earth. Because of its gravity, "it's grabbing things coming into the solar system," he said. And that's actually protecting us from all the objects flying around out there.
But nobody thought Jupiter got hit more than once a century or so. "The fact that we've seen two of these collisions in 15 years is phenomenal," Weaver said.
The last time Jupiter got hit, astronomers saw the comet coming weeks ahead. Around the world, thousands of professional and amateur astronomers pointed their telescopes at Jupiter as the fragments struck.
And it put on a good show, Weaver said. Jupiter is a largely gaseous planet. Giant plumes of material shot up, then rained back and caused waves and secondary impacts.
This new object might not have appeared beforehand because it was darker or smaller than comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, Fletcher said.
Rowan University astronomer Karen Magee-Sauer said she was amazed at the quality of the Australian's pictures.
She said the event should tell us something about Jupiter's thick atmosphere. "It's like throwing a rock into a pond. The splash comes up letting you see what's underneath the surface."
Contact staff writer Faye Flam
at 215-854-4977 or fflam@phillynews.com.
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