It’s often said that Jupiter is Earth’s shield. Its mass attracts objects that crash there. That’s what was observed recently. A mysterious object crashed into Jupiter and caused a bright flash of light. Luckily, this was all captured by amateur astronomers. They saw the impact 588 million kilometers away.
Amateur discoverers
How did this happen? Well, German Harald Paleske was looking at the shadow of Jupiter’s moon Io. He was at that instant creating a solar eclipse in Jupiter’s planetary atmosphere. That’s when he detected the probable impact. “A bright flash of light surprised me,” he revealed to Space Weather.
Paleske was intrigued. And he looked at every frame in hopes of determining what had caused the flash. Another amateur astronomer in Brazil also documented the event. He is José Luis Pereira. He had his observing equipment set up in the state of Sao Paulo on September 12.
“I checked the result only on the morning of the 14th. It was when the program alerted me about the high probability of impact. Then, I verified that there was indeed a record in the first video of the night,” Pereira wrote.
A new impact flash has been discovered on Jupiter by Brazilian observer Jose Luis Pereira – the flash occurred at Sep 13th, 22:39:30 UTC. It looks quite a bright one. Follow up images of this region will be useful to see if any dark scar was left following the event pic.twitter.com/LL9rDGvodm
– Damian Peach💙 (@peachastro) September 14, 2021
Impact magnet
He then sent the information to the French Astronomical Society. And it confirmed that the event seen in the images is an impact. This is the eighth recorded impact on the gas giant. The first had been identified in 1994.
Undoubtedly, Jupiter is a focus of many amateurs and professional astronomers. They always hope to discover the mysteries of the gas giant. Thanks to that, these amateurs witnessed that a mysterious object crashed into Jupiter.
Experts estimate that every month small objects crash into Jupiter’s atmosphere. One explanation is due to the fact that this planet is 1,300 times larger than the Earth. Therefore, it has a very strong gravity. And this attracts asteroids and other bodies that cross its orbit. A very functional shield.
