Jupiter explosion sends astronomers scrambling

An amateur astronomer has sent the science world abuzz after he noticed an explosion on the surface of Jupiter.

The bright flash observed on Monday has sent astronomers scrambling to figure out what caused it and whether the planet has been left scarred.

United States amateur astronomer Dan Peterson noticed the explosion on Monday while observing Jupiter through a telescope, New Scientist reported.

Peterson hadn't caught it on camera, so he sent a note detailing his observations, to other astronomers.

Amateur astrophotographer George Hall had been filming Jupiter with a web camera and went back over his footage after receiving Peterson's note.

"Had [Peterson] not recognised the event and issued the alert, I would never gone back and reviewed my videos in enough detail to see the impact," Hall told New Scientist.

Hall had captured the explosion in a four-second video.

Astronomers said it was most likely caused by a comet or asteroid.

While Jupiter is used to taking hits of this kind, they're becoming more noticeable as astronomers, and particularly amateur astronomers, now have the tools to capture the hits in a photo or on film.

"This is a remarkable tool for us professional astronomers," Franck Marchis of the SETI Institute told New Scientist.

"We cannot observe Jupiter continuously. But now when something like this happens, we can see it."

The image caught on Monday was the fourth seen in just over three years.

Two hits were spotted in 2010, while another impact was noticed in 2009, which astronomers now believe was caused by a 500-metre-wide asteroid.

The only observed impact before that was in 1994, according to New Scientist.

Comments

Wildlife conservation on ice: frozen zoos to save animals

On the edge: Disease and habitat loss is decimating wild amphibian populations globally, with more than 200 species needing urgent intervention through captive breeding, says Dr. Simon Clulow. In a south-eastern suburb in Melbourne, there’s a zoo. It has no visitors, and there are no animals anywhere inside it. Rather, the Australian Frozen Zoo houses living cells and genetic material from Australian native and rare and exotic species. This place, and others like it, could be a big part of the future of conservation. Department of Biological Sciences’ Simon Clulow and his colleagues make the case for ‘biobanking’ in a recent piece in Conservation Letters. Clulow is keen to stress that this doesn’t mean getting rid of conventional zoos or captive breeding programs. “Captive breeding has had some wonderful successes, and there will always be a huge place for it,” he says. PhD student and lead author Lachlan Howell agrees. “It was captive breeding that brought the giant panda back from

Insects are terrified of fish

ScienceDaily — The mere presence of a predator causes enough stress to kill a dragonfly, even when the predator cannot actually get at its prey to eat it, say biologists at the University of Toronto. "How prey respond to the fear of being eaten is an important topic in ecology, and we've learned a great deal about how these responses affect predator and prey interactions," says Professor Locke Rowe, chair of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (EEB) and co-principal investigator of a study conducted at U of T's Koffler Scientific Reserve. "As we learn more about how animals respond to stressful conditions -- whether it's the presence of predators or stresses from other natural or human-caused disruptions -- we increasingly find that stress brings a greater risk of death, presumably from things such as infections that normally wouldn't kill them," says Rowe. Shannon McCauley, a post-doctoral fellow, and EEB professo

Nasa’s Mars perseverance “Kodiak” moment – Jezero Crater’s Lake is more complicated and intriguing than thought

The escarpment the science team refers to as “Scarp a” is seen in this image captured by Perseverance rover’s Mastcam-Z instrument on April 17, 2021. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS Pictures from NASA’s latest six-wheeler on the Red Planet suggest the area’s history experienced significant flooding events. A new paper from the science team of NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover details how the hydrological cycle of the now-dry lake at Jezero Crater is more complicated and intriguing than originally thought. The findings are based on detailed imaging the rover provided of long, steep slopes called escarpments, or scarps in the delta, which formed from sediment accumulating at the mouth of an ancient river that long ago fed the crater’s lake. The images reveal that billions of years ago, when Mars had an atmosphere thick enough to support water flowing across its surface, Jezero’s fan-shaped river delta experienced late-stage flooding events that carried rocks and debris into it from the hi

Search This Blog