2023-11-23 19:50:00
In recent days, another impact was recorded on Jupiter by a Japanese amateur astronomer, who captured the event on a video.
The record shows an object colliding once morest the giant gas planet, followed by a strong glow in a region of the plane. Scientist Heidi Hammel, part of the James Webb Telescope team, said, responding to astronomer Kunihik Suzuki’s video on X, that the bright flash was the result of a bolide —a shooting star in Jupiter’s atmosphere.
The exact origin of the object, whether it is fragments of comets or asteroids, is still unknown.
The object, apparently too small to leave visible traces as in previous collisions, plunged into the Jovian atmosphere, heating up due to friction with the gases.
It then exploded, generating the visible light recorded in the video. Hammel highlights that past events, such as the 1994 collision with pieces of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, impacted the atmosphere, leaving dark marks and contributing to significant changes.
Jupiter, as the most massive planet in the Solar System, exerts an intense gravitational pull, capturing objects that eventually collide with its atmosphere. This phenomenon is not isolated, and amateur astronomers had already recorded similar events in 2021 and August of this year.
These impacts not only offer fascinating astronomical insights, they also have scientific implications, enriching our understanding of atmospheric dynamics and Jupiter’s interaction with objects in space around it.
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