Fragments of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 lined up along the comet's orbital path, in a composite of images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in 1994. A close encounter with Jupiter in 1992 broke up the comet's single nucleus into more than 20 pieces, which subsequently assumed their notable “string-of-pearls” appearance. Weaver and T.E. SmithOn March 25, 1993, a previously unknown positioned close to Jupiter was discovered by and and in photographs taken by using the 18-inch (46-cm) at in. Its appearance was very unusual—it at least a dozen active cometary nuclei lined up like glowing pearls on a string. As the nuclei spread farther apart, a total of 21 fragments were seen.

Aug 15, 2008  A rare chance to see space agency footage as a comet strikes Jupiter and is caught on camera. In one of the biggest explosions that have ever been witnessed, scientists discuss the theoretical. The videos taken March 17 show a small flash on the right side of the planet when the object impacts the gas giant’s clouds.

An analysis of their common revealed that the original comet had been revolving about the and had been captured into orbit around Jupiter, most probably around 1929. It had passed only 0.31 Jupiter radii, about 22,100 km 13,800 miles, above the cloud tops of Jupiter’s atmosphere on July 8, 1992.

Football manager 2015 free download for pc. At that distance, tidal forces from the giant planet’s broke the original nucleus (estimated to be 1.6 km 1 mile in diameter) into many pieces. The resulting 21 nuclei followed a highly two year orbit around Jupiter. Gravitational perturbations by the Sun then changed the orbit and lowered the perijove (point of closest approach to Jupiter) to less than the planet’s radius, causing the 21 nuclei to impact Jupiter in July 1994.The train of fragments from Shoemaker-Levy 9 smashed into Jupiter’s atmosphere with a velocity of 221,000 km (137,300 miles) per hour beginning on July 16, 1994. They all hit on the unobservable night side beyond the limb of Jupiter as seen from Earth.

Fortunately, NASA’s Galileo spacecraft, then en route to Jupiter, was in a position to see the night side and observed the impacts directly. For Earth-based observers, the planet’s 9.92-hour rotation period quickly brought each impact site into view.

Separated in time by an average of seven to eight hours, each fragment plunged deep into the Jovian atmosphere, exploding with tremendous energy and creating a bubble of super-hot gas called a “fireball.” As the fireball rose back out of the Jovian atmosphere, it deposited dark clouds of ejecta on top of the Jovian clouds. Aligned along a zone near latitude 44° S. Those clouds were composed of fine organic cometary dust and dust from the fireball burning in Jupiter’s atmosphere. About one-third of the fragments produced little or no observable effects, suggesting that their nuclei were very small, probably less than 100 metres (330 feet) in diameter. Astronomers labeled the individual fragments with capital letters in order of arrival. Fragment G, with an estimated diameter of 350–600 metres (1,100–2,000 feet), was probably the largest and heaviest. It left a multiringed black cloud larger than Earth’s diameter.

Its impact delivered energy equivalent to at least 48 billion tons of —many times the yield of the world’s supply of nuclear weapons. The dark clouds glowed warmly in images of Jupiter as they slowly expanded and cooled over a few days, and they remained visible for weeks. They faded slowly and eventually disappeared.