Monday, July 20, 2009

Keck image shows likely impact on Jupiter

Above is an infrared image of Jupiter, as observed by Paul Kalas, Michael Fitzgerald and Franck Marchis at the Keck telescope. Note the bright spot, which overlaps the mysterious black spot that recently appeared on Jupiter (see earlier post, below), indicating that this spot is indeed hot. This supports the notion that Jupiter was indeed hit by an impacting comet or asteroid. See New Scientist for more.

2 comments:

Joe Hahn said...

This NASA press release shows an additional image of Jupiter's new scar.

Joe Hahn said...

Nice color composite image of the impact site seen in the IR, as observed at the Gemini telescope, observed by Imke de Pater, Heidi Hammel, and Travis Rector.