Ned Potter is the science correspondent for ABC's "World News with Charles Gibson." He has reported on such topics as space exploration, the human genome and climate change.
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Jupiter Dusts Self Off, Gets Back to Work
July 23, 2009 1:49 PM
Whatever hit Jupiter last weekend, it has a lot of Jovians hopping mad, and a lot of astronomers on Earth trying to figure out what happened.
There are new images of the Earth-size scar where something -- perhaps a small comet or meteoroid -- apparently plowed into the clouds near Jupiter's south pole on Sunday. Take a look at this infrared picture, shot by the Gemini North telescope near the summit of Mauna Kea in Hawaii:
The impact point is the orange feature near the bottom center of Jupiter's disc in this image. The picture was created by combining two different infrared images.
"At these wavelengths we receive thermal radiation (heat) from the planet's upper atmosphere," Imke de Pater of the University of California at Berkeley, said in a statement. "The impact site is clearly much warmer than its surroundings, as shown by our image."
Credit where credit is due: Imke de Pater (UC Berkeley), Heidi B. Hammel (Space Science Institute), Travis Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage), Gemini Observatory/AURA.
It is somewhat more vivid than the black-and-white infrared image that NASA sent out on Tuesday, though it's clear over time that the heat from the friction of the interloper plunging through Jupiter's atmosphere is dissipating.
Meanwhile, here's the picture that started it all, shot on Sunday by Anthony Wesley, an amateur astronomer in Australia who realized there was something new on Jupiter, and alerted the rest of the world.
This shot uses visible light. The south pole of Jupiter is at the top, and the impact spot -- much less prominent when we're not looking at an infrared heat signature -- is the tiny dark dot just below the pole.
Wesley's description -- including mention of what happened to his blog when his post was linked by Slashdot.org -- makes good reading, and it's HERE.
Should we Earthlings be worried? We we reported on Tuesday (click HERE) Jupiter acts as a great celestial (pun alert) vacuum cleaner, drawing a lot of the solar system's junk its way. The object that hit it Sunday, whatever it was, went undetected from Earth -- but keep in mind that nobody down here is regularly looking out for Jupiter's welfare, the way astronomers are cataloging Near Earth Objects (look HERE) that might someday hit us.
If the object had been wandering around our part of the inner solar system (nearly half a billion miles from Jupiter), space scientists say we probably would have noticed it. Whether, with current technology, we would have been able to do anything about it, is another matter.
==================
UPDATE, Friday, 4:20 p.m. EDT:
One more image -- this one from the Hubble Space Telescope, imaged in visible light on Thursday and just released. Click on the picture to get a (much) enlarged version.
One extra note about this image: it's the first since the shuttle Atlantis made its rendezvous with the Hubble in May to upgrade the telescope. There appear to be a couple of other hiccups, but with the Wide Field Camera used for this picture, so far, so good.
July 23, 2009 in Science, Space | Permalink | Share | User Comments (12)
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I am a little worried we, i.e. human beings, did not know about this before it happened.
Posted by: Elliot | Jul 23, 2009 2:44:25 PM
It has long been known that Jupiter is our solar system's trap. It's gravitational pull is so great that it has caught numerous objects and prevented them from impacting the earth.
Impressive that we get to see one that large in our lifetime, but nothing new.
Posted by: Brady | Jul 23, 2009 4:44:15 PM
Elliot, if it worries you that we knew nothing about this then contact President Obama and tell him to give NASA the funding it deserves in lieu of his campaign promise to starve it of funds that it was to use on the Constellation Program to build a new space faring infrastructure for this nation. He promised to delay it for at least 5 years to pay for "education reform". No definition on what that means at all of course. Currently we are powerless to do anything with an approaching asteroid and the president, congress or the senate are not apt to do anything about it but continue to take money away from research.
Posted by: PNA9876 | Jul 23, 2009 5:53:08 PM
So, I certainly didn't notice Jupiter until now. Why isn't anyone talking about the appearance of this big, new planet?
Posted by: Captain Oblivious | Jul 24, 2009 5:42:33 AM
Will someone please remind Mr. Potter and the rest of the media that it's a "meteor" while in space, a "meteoroid" while flying through the atmosphere, and a "meteorite" once it's on the ground.
Posted by: Mike | Jul 24, 2009 9:49:55 AM
Mike
By your own definitions, Ned seems to have used the term properly, or at least close enough.
"meteoroid -- apparently plowed into the clouds near Jupiter's south pole"
What part of Jupiter's clouds would not be "atmosphere?" Unless it has to be EARTH'S atmosphere, which would be a pretty silly nit-pick.
Posted by: jock59801 | Jul 24, 2009 11:58:39 AM
I'm going to write to my Congressman right away, unless he's embroiled in some kind of sex scandal. As a Nevadan, it's wise to keep an eye on them.
Posted by: andyr | Jul 25, 2009 2:55:31 PM
Everyone should write their government representatives in case of a threat from an asteroid or comet. They'll ignore it and it will go away.
Posted by: andyr | Jul 25, 2009 2:59:52 PM
This country has outsourced 80% of are manufacturing we couldn’t even build an Apollo space rocket anymore, if there is something coming from outer space those Neanderthals in Washington are not going to say anything, it would hurt the economy.
Posted by: Dana W | Jul 26, 2009 4:33:11 AM
Isaac Newton in his retirement years wound up working at the mint you know were they make the money I always found this peculiar of course old Isaac wasn’t your average guy, It turns out that if you want to know just how honest a government really is look at who creates the money and what for “who issues it”, to loan is to create debt and the interest is never created. Are government needs to issue its own money so it will be organic interest free.
Posted by: Dana W | Jul 26, 2009 5:02:06 AM
We travel through hundreds of millions of miles of space every year, moving at amazing speed not knowing what we might be running into, yet most people appear to believe that some scientist peering through his telescope is going to detect a tiny chunk of space debris moving in our direction in time for our all-powerful military wizards to save our planet from utter destruction.
It is amazing to me how stupid we people can be...
Posted by: James B. | Jul 26, 2009 1:14:35 PM
The irony is that something like this should remind everyone that this tiny rock we're living on is a speck of dust in the universe. Instead we choose to focus on nonsense 'death panels' rather than get along with each other.
I agree with James B. that we humans have an incredible capacity for stupidity and hubris, along with our better traits.
Posted by: MIguy | Aug 15, 2009 2:28:18 AM
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