Jupiter's Impact
On 19th July, amongst all the Apollo 11 anniversary celebrations, amateur astronomer Anthony Wesley from Murrumbateman, Australia imaged a dark patch in the atmosphere of Jupiter. On Twitter there was discussion as to whether this might be the impact site of a small comet or asteroid or simply Jovian weather.
Within a couple of days, astronomers using the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility, on the summit of Mauna Kea, had taken infrared images which provided good evidence towards the impact hypothesis. On Wednesday, Gemini North imaged the 'glowing bruise' in the mid-infrared showing that the spot was much warmer than its surroundings in the upper atmosphere.
Closeup view of the new dark spot on Jupiter taken with Hubbles Wide Field Camera 3 on 23 July 2009. CREDIT: NASA, ESA, and H. Hammel (Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colorado) and the Jupiter Comet Impact Team
What has been particularly exciting about this week is what it shows us about the astronomical community. The word amateur is often used to mean 'in-expert' by people in the media but in astronomy it retains its Latin (and French) roots meaning "lover of" or "enthusiastic pursuer of an objective".
Amateur astronomers can often have very impressive telescopes and, perhaps more importantly, time to watch the sky to catch sudden events. The discovery of new comets, new supernovae, and outbursts of variable stars still rely on the patience and dedication of amateurs around the world. The second remarkable aspect of astronomy is the way the astronomical community will then pursue a discovery with everything from backyard telescopes to large professional instruments. Even the Hubble Space Telescope can be used to chase up your discovery. You don't get that in many other fields of endeavour.
Congratulations to Anthony Wesley for his discovery and if you have a reasonably sized telescope you might want to try observing the impact site yourself. Keep watching the skies.
Comments: Jupiter's Impact
From: Joe Harrington
Date: Fri, 24 Jul 2009 08:56:02
Subject: Re: Re Jupiter impact
> Why it is not possible to have
> the telescope (just one ) being
> programmed to (among other
> things) *look* once a day at
> each of Solar
> system planets and compare the
> bit map of the image taken with > the one
> taken day before ?
> It is a shame and major
> embarrassment that nobody from
> professional
> astronomers was able to capture > this impact event !
Well, it's a good question. Here are a few answers:
1. Amateurs actually do this job quite well. Professional telescopes would not catch an event any faster than amateur telescopes. This impact was discovered within 8 hours of its happening. Professional
images followed less than 12 hours later. All the interesting
short-term dynamics in an impact are over in just 2-3 hours. The next relevant timescale is days. So professional monitoring would not have gained us much. To do the job right, you have to plan and schedule professional observations long before they are executed.
2. The instrumentation on professional telescopes is often not what you would want for this sort of thing. That entails an instrument change at the start of each night. At some telescopes this is as fast as 20 minutes. At others an instrument change takes all night. So it's not just a matter of snapping a few photos, as it is with amateur instruments. It would be a real investment in time. It also costs
money to run an instrument even when it is not taking data. Our
budgets are stretched *very* thin as it is.
3. How many other astronomical communities would ask for similar
monitoring? The supernova people, gamma-ray burst people, comet
people, and so forth. The requirements (field of view, depth of exposure, etc.) vary a lot. Accommodating all such requests would be another big investment.
4. You'd need someone to manage the nightly survey and process the
data every night in real time. With one interesting, unpredicted
event every 5-10 years or so (impact, outburst, etc.), it's not
exactly something that would bring career reward to anyone. An
amateur could do it. But in fact, amateurs *are* doing it! Andrew
Wesley's image is quite good, don't you think?
As a matter of fact, however, there are now several large
survey-the-sky-every-night programs under construction: LSST,
PAN-STARRS, and so forth. For impacts, what we really need is a deep debris survey around each planet every few months, to predict impacts.
It may be that some of those new survey projects will do this. That's how we found SL9. There just doesn't happen to be one of those running right now. Again, it's a pretty risky career strategy, given the chance of not finding much for 5 years or more.
People sometimes forget that professional astronomy is more of a
market geared toward finding exciting new results, and less of a
single, top-down-organized enterprise.
--jh--
--- Forwarded message ----------
From: Glenn Orton
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 2009 10:43:01
Subject: Re: Re your Jupiter impact comment
No, he's a collector. He gets images from many other amateurs and
collates, collect comments on them. Sounds like a leech but he's an angel because he puts all the parts together.
He's the author of Jupiter:The Giant Planet
So far, we're looking at data from possibly 10 hours before to see if there was anything, but - yes - a digital record of the events is what's taking place.
Jupiter monitoring may or may not be happening at many wavelengths. Usually depends on funding (no surprise).
Glenn
On Wed, 22 Jul 2009, wrote:
> Thanks !
>
> So should I interprete your >reflection in a way that John >Rogers has his telescope
> programmed to (among other
> things) *look* once a day at >each of Solar system planets and >compare the bit map of the image >taken with the one
> taken day before ... and >therefore he at least was able to >pinpoint to the one day accuracy) >when the impact took place ?
>
=========================
> Thanks,
> Best Regards,
> Alex
> ===================================
> Glenn Orton
Wed, Jul
> 22, 2009 at 1:19 PM
>
> As it turns out, now that I have > a moment to reflect, John Rogers > was already doing that.
===================================
> On 7/21/09, Glenn Orton wrote:
> > We were frankly inexperienced > > in these mechanisms and were
> > simply pursing
> > a regularly scheduled
> > observing run.
> > Rocket scientist or not, I'm as
> > human as the rest of us! :-) > > Hope can can make up for lost > > time.
> >
> > Glenn, about to board a plane!
> >
> > On Tue, 21 Jul 2009, wrote:
> >
> >> Dear Glenn,
> >> =========================
> >> Glenn Orton, a scientist at
> >> JPL and his team of
> >> astronomers kicked
> >> into gear early in Monday
> >> morning and haven't stopped
> >> tracking the
> >> planet. They are downloading > >> data now and are working to
> >> get
> >> additional observing time on > >> this and other telescopes.
> >> "We were extremely lucky to
> >> be seeing Jupiter at exactly > >> the right
> >> time, the right hour, the
> >> right side of Jupiter to
> >> witness the event.
> >> We couldn't have planned it
> >> better," he said.
> >> ==============================
> >> So how come (if what you did > >> say above is true) this
> >> impact was not
> >> immediately registered /
> >> alerted via the existing
> >> mechanisms of the
> >> "official astronomy" "real
> >> time" persistent ongoing
> >> monitoring ?????
> >>
> >> ARP
Posted by Alex on Sunday 26th Jul 2009 (22:26 UTC)
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I just find it fascinating!!
Posted by London Flyer on Friday 07th Aug 2009 (09:54 UTC)
Jupiter has been always fascinating for me. I wonder if I can ever visit any other planet.
Posted by cialis on Wednesday 16th Sep 2009 (13:39 UTC)
I have just started reading about astronomy so please forgive my ignorance, but how do you see an impact in a gas object? I understand there is a solid core. Thank you in advance for your time.
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