VIDEOS. Impressive explosion of a star hitting Jupiter – The Express

Such rare images and impressive. On March 17, an unidentified object struck Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system. The impact was so violent that the luminous explosion was visible from Earth is 600 million km away. Evidenced by the images of two amateur astronauts, who had the chance to capture the scene.

“I was watching and I was filming Jupiter on March 17 with a Skywatcher Newton telescope [20 centimeters in diameter, Ed]. The picture was not very clear, so I hesitated to keep the video. But 10 days later, when I finally looked, I saw this strange visible spot less than a second on the edge of the planetary disk. Looking back at comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 [which is a comet collided with Jupiter in 1994, Ed], my only explanation is that it must be an asteroid or comet that went into the upper layers of the atmosphere of Jupiter and burned or exploded very quickly, “wrote Gerrit Kernbauer, an Austrian amateur astronomer on his Youtube account.

The video, published on 26 March was viewed 1.2 million times at the time of writing. She even rise in the eyes of NASA and Paul Chodas, the director of the “celestial objects close to the Earth” by the US space agency. “It is more likely that either an asteroid [a comet, Ed] simply because there are more,” he explained to space.com specialized site.

“Happy surprise”

While some observers have questioned whether this event was not rather a defect in the video, doubts were raised when John McKeon, Irish amateur astronomer, published two days later other images confirming the phenomenon.

“Basically, I wanted to create a t ime-lapse [a video made by a series of photographs, Ed], but I was pleasantly surprised to observe an impact on Jupiter in the last shot of the night, “he wrote on his Youtube account, where the video has been accessed 70,000 times.

Jupiter gas giant loving to the stars

As noted by Le Figaro , the two observations are consistent within seconds: 0:18 min and 33 seconds in the recording of the Austrian and 0:18 min and 45 seconds in one of the Irish. It can not therefore be any visual artifact. If this kind of impact is not uncommon -l’importante gravity of Jupiter attracts many astres- their immortalization in the video is much, especially by amateurs.

As noted Gerrit Kernbauer, the most famous event in the material dates back to 16 July 1994, when the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 and Jupiter debris struck, leaving traces of impact on the surface the gas giant. The images this time had been recorded by the Galileo spacecraft.