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By Emily Lakdawalla

Confirmation of the Jupiter impact from Christopher Go

Jun. 3, 2010 | 17:51 PDT | Jun. 4 00:51 UTC

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Click here for an updated and more coherent account of the June 3 Jupiter impact, 22 hours later.

EDIT Jun 4 02:39: Added color photo processed by Wesley!

EDIT 20:39: Link to Wesley's video posted below!

The impact flash on Jupiter observed earlier today by Anthony Wesley has been confirmed by Phillippines-based amateur astronomer Christopher Go. And Go caught video! ~~(Actually, Wesley caught video too, but as of the time that I am writing this, he had not yet finished processing his. I will update this post later once he has shared his video.)~~

Here's Go's video of the event (WMV format, 140 k)
And...
Here's Wesley's video of the event (AVI format, 46 MB) (By the way, I could not get this one to open with Windows Media Player, but iTunes displayed it fine.)

Once again, kudos to Go and Wesley for capturing this fleeting event, and, on behalf of solar system exploration fans everywhere, thanks for your nightly vigilance!

More posts related to this:
Astro Bob has coordinates.
Spaceweather.com reports coordinates as related by Wesley: "Anthony Wesley has pinpointed the impact site at Jovian latitude minus 16.1°, and central meridian longitudes CM1: 300°, CM2: 33.8° and CM3: 210.4°."
Daniel Fischer is posting lots of links on Twitter.
Jason Perry is also Tweeting links, and posted predictions for when Europeans may catch the impact site passing by tonight: "The impact site reaches the bright limb at 02:52 UTC, crosses the central meridian at 05:15 UTC and the evening terminator at 07:22 UTC."
Wesley now has a page for the images and video he captured of the impact.

Here is Wesley's processed view of the impact:

Jupiter on June 3, 2010: Impact flash!
Australian amateur astronomer Anthony Wesley was observing Jupiter at 20:31 UTC on June 3, 2010 when he fortuitously caught the flash of some object hitting the planet. This image is processed from the data presented in video format here (AVI format, 45 MB); the flash has been processed separately from the RGB frames used to make the color view and dropped into the correct location on the planet's disk. Credit: Anthony Wesley

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Comments

I hope Go doesn't mind, but I uploaded a YouTube clip of his video for those of us having problems with the WMV format. I also included replays the impact a few times at slower speeds. Here is the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AXSA9rZzrU

#1 - kurtjmac - 06/03/2010 - 19:33

Incredible! If only we had a probe at Jupiter now...

#2 - Dunkleosteus - 06/04/2010 - 00:50

That WAS the probe at Jupiter! Doh!!!

Seriously, this was a great find by Wesley and Go...amateur schmamateur, these guys are top-notch in my book!

#3 - J. Major - 06/04/2010 - 07:25

Seems like a good time to start finding out ways to get some big payloads into space; permanent stations on a scale orders of magnitude larger and more capable that ISS, in Geostationary Orbits, able to be rotated for simulated grav and having adequate shielding. It seems impossibly expensive and using current rocket concepts, but it doesn't cost 10 times more to make a rocket 10 times as big, and if all it does it haul freight like propellant,shielding, and construction materials, people and gravity sensitive/delicate payloads will take the cheaper and smaller taxi. Luckily we already know how to do it. I wonder which country will muster the will to do it.

#4 - doug l - 06/04/2010 - 19:16

Is it possible this was not an impact but some electrical discharge in the atmosphere? It left no trace which is strange, and also lasted about 5 sec with what looked like an irregular light curve, rather than instantaneous as I would expect from an impact.

#5 - lcs - 06/05/2010 - 18:10

Astronomy Instructor -- Columbia Basin College

I have observed the videos both by Anthony Wesley and Christopher Go. In both videos I do not see an impact. What I see is lightning – a huge primary bolt coupled with side bolts in several directions. Both videos corroborate each other. The area where the event occurs is where the SEB has recently disappeared due to some as yet ‘unknown’ phenomena. It is quite possible that the lightning seen in the Wesley/Go observations is related to the atmospheric disturbance that caused the disappearance of the SEB.

Thus far, no one has seen an impact ‘blemish’ in the atmosphere following the event as has been seen from all other documented impact events. This supports a non-impact interpretation of the event.

I encourage all who observe these videos to look with an objective mind at the option that the event was caused by lightning.

#6 - Tony George - 06/06/2010 - 15:41

Antipode flashes!

To corroborate what Tony George said above, in addition to the flashes looking like lightning, we also have June 3 and August 20 flashes being near-antipodes of each other. Correcting the coordinates above to Anthony's true calcs for CM3 gives us: 159.4, -16.1 for June 3 and 337.4, 17+ for August 20 (CM3). As you can see, these are near-antipodes and the odds of such by chance are only 1 in 25,000. This implies that there has been an event at the center of Jupiter that has discharged and met resistance at the insulative levels, discharging 78 days apart from each other at the surface when comparing sides.

#7 - J. Carper - 11/13/2010 - 07:32


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