Play-by-Play
Coverage of Cosmic Collisions
When
fragments of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 crashed into Jupiter in
1994, Hubble captured the dramatic encounter. Since Jupiter
has no solid surface and is made mostly of gas, the collisions
did not make craters like ones on earth or the moon. But the
comet created enormous changes in the Jovian atmosphere and
the gases below, affecting some areas larger than earth.
Hubble
tracked the nine-day event in a series of images that revealed
how the impact sites changed over time. This play-by-play coverage
is helping astronomers better understand the dynamics of Jupiter’s
atmosphere. The images also shed light on the origins of planets--which
are believed to arise from collisions of matter--and the effects
of comets thought to have crashed onto ancient earth.
