Astro Bob A look at celestial happenings in the Northland and beyond Bob King View my profile Click here to view previous posts or additional resources

Amateur astronomer spots fireball on Jupiter!

The impact is the bright spot at upper left. For amateurs wishing to examine the location to see if any darkening in the clouds becomes visible, the event occured at -16 degrees latitude. The longitudes of the central meridian at the time are as follows: CM1 = 300, CM2 = 33.8, CM3 = 210.4 The flash location: L1 = 248.8, L2 = 342.7, L3 = 159.4. Credit: Anthony Wesley

Ace amateur astronomer and astrophotographer Anthony Wesley appears to have made yet another remarkable discovery on Jupiter. He watched and photographed a large fireball in Jupiter's atmosphere around 3:30 p.m. Central time today (Thursday)from his observatory in Australia. "I saw it visually, it was very obvious," said Wesley."The fireball lasted a couple of seconds and was very, very bright."

Evidently the planet's been hit again perhaps by a comet, meteoroid or asteroid. This last time Jupiter got smacked was last summer. Guess who was the first to see that one? Wesley of course. He saw and photographed an odd dark spot he suspected was different from Jupiter's usual array of spots and sent the data to professional astronomers who confirmed his suspicions. That impact left a dark spot in the planet's upper cloud deck. This time it appears he may have recorded the impact itself -- an amazing feat. Wesley watched the bright spot fade, but no visible remains of the impact were noted in the next half hour until sunrise put an end to his observing run.

Check out this short video link to see the event happen right before your eyes. Wow!

That's all I have for now. I'll update with more information as soon as I hear it.

Posted by: rking@duluthnews.com on 6/3/2010 at 6:44 PM | Comments (0) | Permalink | Edit

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