HST mosaic of the comet Shoemaker-Levy
HST mosaic of the comet Shoemaker-Levy
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Comet Shoemaker-Levy crash movieOn 1993, Gene Shoemaker, Carolyn Shoemaker and David Levy discovered a peculiar comet: it looked as a "squashed comet". Captured by Jupiter's gravitational clutch more than a century ago, it broke apart under Jupiter's tidal forces in 1992. Orbits calculated from the comet's positions made clear that the fragments were headed into Jupiter. The first impact, that of fragment A, was visible in infrared as a brilliant "fireball". The biggest fragments were only 700 meters in diameter, but Jupiter's gravity caused them to slam into the giant planet with a velocity of 60 km per second, four to five times the speed they have reached in a terrestrial collision. The energy released by the impactor that caused Chicxulub's crater was 100 times greater.The movie shows twelve infrared frames of the fireball produced by the impact of fragment A on July 16, 1994. The bright light on the planet's left is the crash. The bright glow to the right is the moon Io. |
