Planetary Society logo
  • “Exploration is in our nature.” - Carl Sagan

Jupiter's Celestial Necklace

Jupiter's Celestial Necklace
Jupiter's Celestial Necklace Skywatchers will be poised to observe the heavenly string of pearls known as comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 this July when it crashes into Jupiter's swirling atmosphere. This is an enlargement of an image captured by the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) on July 1, 1993, showing the region of the brightest nucleus of the comet, torn apart when it came too close to Jupiter in 1992. This "bright nucleus" is actually a group of at least four separate pieces. The span of this entire image covers about 64,000 kilometers (40,000 miles). North is at the lower right. H.A. Weaver and T.E. Smith, Space Telescope Science Institute/NASA