Something May Have Just Hit Jupiter 299
The blog of Anthony Wesley, an Australian amateur astronomer, has what may be the first photos of a recent comet or asteroid impact on Jupiter, near the south pole. These photos are 11 hours old. The ones at the bottom of the page show three small dark spots in addition to the main dark mark. The Bad Astronomy blog picked up the story a few hours later — but cautions that what we're seeing may not be an impact event. This is all reminiscent of the closely watched impact of comet Shoemaker-Levy on Jupiter in 1994.
Or may not have (Score:3, Insightful)
Bad Astronomy says "it's jumping the gun to call it an impact event before we get more observations". I've got an idea for the next Slashdot article: "Asteroid heading towards earth - or maybe just spot on lense".
Hubble! (Score:2, Insightful)
I hope they can get the Hubble scope on it fast, without bureaucratic or technical hurdles.
Re:Yep, that's why God put em there (Score:2, Insightful)
Sorry, didn't mean to come across like a jackass.
Re:Well that's why they're there... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, till the day one of them changes the orbit of what would have been just something to observe in the sky, to something that knocks us clean out of our orbit.
Re:Yep, that's why God put em there (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, but in your rush to denigrate people who believe differently than yourself you did.
Something May Have Just Hit Jupiter (Score:5, Insightful)
Eeriest Slashdot story title of the year?
Re:new site jupiter.samba.org (Score:3, Insightful)
As well as being an amateur astronomer, Anthony is a keen Linux enthusiast. His home built telescope is controlled by his Linux box.
But not tonight, I bet it's not controlling a damn thing.
Re:This should be modded "Troll" ... (Score:2, Insightful)
It parses far too easily as a joke on spousal abuse.
Does it parse any other way!?
Well, I guess it could be parsed as planetary lesbian domestic partner abuse, if you really want to be PC.
Re:This should be modded "Troll" ... (Score:5, Insightful)
So? here at Slashdot we make jokes of murderers, pedophiles, recently deceased people, people with disabilities, etc. And if we don't care about *those*, I don't see why we'd care about simple domestic abuse.
Plus, it provides some much-needed relief from the endless 2010 allusions being posted here.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Hubble! (Score:2, Insightful)
Fun, isn't it?
Re:thats nice and all (Score:2, Insightful)
Well be careful, it could also something like what has happened on the 2010 movie starting to occur, keep on watching maybe this "spot" will propagate to the whole planet then afterward, Jupiter will become our second Sun. ;-))
Welcome to true global warming !
Re:Or may not have (Score:5, Insightful)
Many people seem to think that amateur is a synonym for incompetent.
Re:Or may not have (Score:5, Insightful)
What's worse, many people seem to think that professional is a synonym for competent.
Re:OMG! Shooting planets out of the sky? (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, given that the planets were FORMED [wikipedia.org] from colliding objects, it's not really surprising that collisions are still happening.
Re:Yep, that's why God put em there (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good to see it doing it's job (Score:3, Insightful)