NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has taken the sharpest visible-light picture of the atmospheric fragments from an object that collided with Jupiter on 19th July. NASA
Discovered by the Australian amateur astronomer Anthony Wesley, the spot was produced when a small comet or asteroid plunged into Jupiter's atmosphere and disintegrated. Such kind of feature has been seen on Jupiter was 15 years ago after the collision of fragments from comet Shoemaker-Levy 9.
"We believe this magnitude of impact is rare, since we are very fortunate to see it with Hubble," said by Amy Simon-Miller of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "Details seen in the Hubble view shows a roughness to the fragments plume caused by turbulence in Jupiter's atmosphere".
The new Hubble images had also confirmed that a May servicing visit by space shuttle astronauts was a great success.
"This image of the impact on Jupiter is rare one," said U.S. Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski, D-Md., chairwoman of the Commerce, Justice and Science Appropriations Subcommittee. "This says us that our astronauts and the ground crew at the Goddard Space Flight Center successfully repaired the Hubble telescope."
For the past days, the Earth-based telescopes have been trained on Jupiter to capture the unfolding drama 360 million miles away,Matt Mountain , director of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore , gave observation time to a team of astronomers led by Heidi Hammel of the Space Science Institute in Boulder , Colo.
Hammel said that "Hubble's truly fine imaging capability has revealed an astonishing wealth of detail in the impact site”. "By combining these images with the ground-based data at other wavelengths, the Hubble data will allow a comprehensive understanding of exactly what is happening to the impact fragments".
Simon-Miller had estimated the diameter of the impacting object that was the size of several football fields. The force of the explosion on the Jupiter was thousands times more powerful than the assumed comet or asteroid that exploded over theSiberian Tunguska River Valley
Discovered by the Australian amateur astronomer Anthony Wesley, the spot was produced when a small comet or asteroid plunged into Jupiter's atmosphere and disintegrated. Such kind of feature has been seen on Jupiter was 15 years ago after the collision of fragments from comet Shoemaker-Levy 9.
"We believe this magnitude of impact is rare, since we are very fortunate to see it with Hubble," said by Amy Simon-Miller of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "Details seen in the Hubble view shows a roughness to the fragments plume caused by turbulence in Jupiter's atmosphere".
The new Hubble images had also confirmed that a May servicing visit by space shuttle astronauts was a great success.
"This image of the impact on Jupiter is rare one," said U.S. Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski, D-Md., chairwoman of the Commerce, Justice and Science Appropriations Subcommittee. "This says us that our astronauts and the ground crew at the Goddard Space Flight Center successfully repaired the Hubble telescope."
For the past days, the Earth-based telescopes have been trained on Jupiter to capture the unfolding drama 360 million miles away,
Hammel said that "Hubble's truly fine imaging capability has revealed an astonishing wealth of detail in the impact site”. "By combining these images with the ground-based data at other wavelengths, the Hubble data will allow a comprehensive understanding of exactly what is happening to the impact fragments".
Simon-Miller had estimated the diameter of the impacting object that was the size of several football fields. The force of the explosion on the Jupiter was thousands times more powerful than the assumed comet or asteroid that exploded over the
The image was taken with the Wide Field Camera 3, but the new camera, installed by the STS-125 astronauts aboard space shuttle Atlantis in May, is not yet fully calibrated. If it is possible to obtain celestial images, the camera's full power has yet to be seen. "This is just an example of what Hubble's new, state-of-the-art camera can do”.
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