Amateur Astronomers Spot Jovian Blast 86
RocketAcademy writes "Spaceweather.com reports an explosion on Jupiter, which was detected by two amateur astronomers. According to Spaceweather.com, the event occurred at 11:35 Universal Time on September 10. Dan Peterson of Racine, Wisconsin, observing through a 12-inch Meade telescope, observed a white flash lasting for 1.5-2 seconds. George Hall of Dallas, Texas was capturing a video of Jupiter at the time, which also captured the event. It's believed that the explosion was due to a comet or small asteroid collision. Similar events were observed in the past, in June and August 2010."
Where's the Kaboom? (Score:5, Funny)
Where's the kaboom? There was supposed to be an Jupiter-shattering kaboom!
Re: (Score:1)
Obligatory (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
random thoughts... (Score:4, Interesting)
SL-9 was a farside impact. This, apparently, was a nearside (not much detail in the video). We should be worried, it could easily, since it obviously came from within Jupiter's orbit, have intersected with Earth. Anybody who has access to the object's orbital parameters which show that this would have been with 100% certainty, impossible, please feel free to call me a paranoid freak at this point; but we are overdue an ELE (Extinction Level Event) by about 15 million years (I keep reading around the science journals about ELEs happening about every 50 million years, the last one was what? 65 million years ago (the K-T Event)?
Re:random thoughts... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
Easily? No, not easily. Jupiter tends to act as a big cleaner for the inner Solar System. It tends to eject comets and asteroids. In fact, it is so good at this that it has pushed out Neptune's orbit.
Don't fall into the gambler's fallacy. The probability of the great impact has not increased since we observed Jupiter getting hit. Jupiter gets hit all the time, but the Earth does not.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Wouldn't it just be a big randomizer of orbital paths? Why does it make kicking stuff away from us
more likely than kicking stuff towards us? I'm not saying it isn't (a big cleaner), just curious
about the logic.
Because it is so big it can eject objects out of the solar system. And while it could easily direct an object towards the inner solar system, after billions of years the ones that it has ejected have decreased the total number enough that the inner solar system is a safe place.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re:random thoughts... (Score:5, Insightful)
we are overdue
Statistics do not work that way!
Re: (Score:1)
Re:random thoughts... (Score:5, Insightful)
You sort of answered yourself. If he was talking about a regular cloud of objects hitting Earth then we are not overdue but already dodged it.
Re: (Score:2)
Why would someone who actually knew anything about orbital mechanics require 100% certainty to feel safe? Even Apophis, an object known to actually have a pretty good chance of hitting earth as such things go was estimated at 1 in 250,000 a few years ago. The odds of some random object disturbed by Jupiter hitting earth is going to be vastly lower.
Space is big. You wouldn't believe...
Re: (Score:2)
...but that doesn't mean it's a good idea to keep doing it.
Soooo, and you suggestion is??
Re:random thoughts... (Score:5, Insightful)
Soooo, and you suggestion is??
Fund more telescopes for NEO (and other object) discovery and tracking. We have a network of telescopes doing this, but it is woefully inadequate for searching the skies sufficiently thoroughly. Early detection of potential impactors is the only chance we have of saving ourselves if/when the Big One comes. And it's only an "if" because it might not happen for many millions of years and who knows if our ancestors will be around then.
We should also be funding the development of the actual capability to deflect one. A gravity tractor craft is actually a pretty simple concept and achievable with todays tech given sufficient lead time, but I don't think we should risk the extra time it takes to go from concept to implementation once we do find one.
The main thing is more detection and tracking, though, because the lead time is essential. This should be considered a major defense priority. But it seems to be hard for people to take it seriously enough, because nobody can say if it will happen in any of our lifetime's.
Of course there's also the remote chance that an long-period comet hits us from the direction of the sun and we end up with basically no warning even with a ridiculously extensive discovery effort. In that case it's que sera sera.
Re: (Score:2)
by the time it gets through all the pollution it should be no bigger than a Chihuahua's head.
Re: (Score:2)
And it's only an "if" because it might not happen for many millions of years and who knows if our ancestors will be around then.
Ancestors? My grandparents are long dead, and I'd be rather startled if my parents were to live for millions of years. If they're going to do that, I'd hope that they'd do so in good health; getting massively old while being in pain from aging would be horrible. Maybe medicine will allow this to happen, but it's rather far into the realm of science fiction at this point...
(The word you were looking for is "descendants".)
Re: (Score:2)
My grandparents are long dead
Oh sure, but who knows where there might be a vampire in your family tree?
Re: (Score:2)
The main thing is more detection and tracking, though, because the lead time is essential. This should be considered a major defense priority.
If the chances are one in millions, then no, it shouldn't be. Even a "city-killer" will likely end up doing no or little damage unless it actually strikes near a city (improbable). I approve of a token effort that ramps up along with civilization, but there are higher priority things to worry about, like extreme solar flare events.
Re: (Score:3)
If the chances are one in millions, then no, it shouldn't be. Even a "city-killer"
"Even"? Objects like that are common. Apophis alone has more than one-in-a-million odds as currently estimated, and the estimated 500MT impact would be over 10,000 times larger than "city killer". There are plenty of objects out there of sufficient size where it's a global extinction event wherever they hit. We just don't know where they are, or if their orbits are such that they threaten us.
You can't just look at the odds,. You also have to look at the impact. The die has already been cast. There ar
Re: (Score:2)
"Even"? Objects like ['city killers'] are common.
The "even" refers to the impact, not the number, as "city killers" were used as the scary threat. They aren't scary. Maybe if they were landing on the order of once a year instead of something like every 100.
You can't just look at the odds,. You also have to look at the impact.
Yes, that's what I did.
while the odds of an impact in any given year are terribly low, we don't know if that means we're not going to see one for a million years, or if we're going to get hit and then not see one for a million years.
In other words, probability is random. Thanks for the update.
A token effort is a useless effort.
No, it isn't. By token I mean as a percentage of our resources. It really depends on how much bang you can get for the buck. As it is, even finding 1% of the threats is better than nothing and not useless.
And what does the ramping up of civilization have to do with it? We're just as screwed regardless of our civilization level. The relevant benchmarks are 1) are we capable of detecting them and 2) are we capable of doing something about it, and we're past both.
Wow, you live i
Re: (Score:2)
The "even" refers to the impact, not the number, as "city killers" were used as the scary threat. They aren't scary.
So because the GGP or whoever that didn't even know what they were talking about said that, your risk analysis is limited to those types of events despite the probabilities you used not even lining up? Fine, whatever. Now think beyond that. Think about the actual problem.
In other words, probability is random. Thanks for the update.
No, in other words, instead of relying on the odds that the cards turned down are favorable to us, we should actually try to look at the cards and see what the reality is.
As it is, even finding 1% of the threats is better than nothing and not useless.
Not literally, but qualitatively yes it is. An insurance policy t
Re: (Score:2)
So because the GGP or whoever that didn't even know what they were talking about said that, your risk analysis is limited to those types of events despite the probabilities you used not even lining up?
No, I responded to both arguments, the more frequent "city killers" that we see, and the once-in-tens-of-millions-of-years extinction events that we see.
No, in other words, instead of relying on the odds that the cards turned down are favorable to us, we should actually try to look at the cards and see what the reality is.
We have, and the odds are extremely low, so low that we have bigger things to prioritize.
But hey if you just meant "token" as a % of resources, then a fully-funded, vastly more effective effort would be such, like I was saying we could do that and address many other problems to.
The point is how much %, where you want a "fully-funded, vastly more effective effort". If it's cheap, then fine, but if it's extremely expensive, then it isn't.
And the simple facts are that if we decided to make these things priorities we could easily do both and many other things.
That's true of anything, and if you took that approach with everything you'd be back to square one due to lac
Re: (Score:3)
But the odds of some *specific* object disturbed by Jupiter hitting the Earth may be vastly *higher*.
The odds of such an object existing are low.
I mean at the end of the day Apophis may have a 100% chance of hitting us, or it might have a 0% chance of hitting us. We can only estimate based on what we know if its orbit. Without knowledge of a specific Jupiter-orbit object, we can only estimate based on the odds of potential disturbed orbits intersecting earth. This is how conditional probability works.
As far as the "maybes" go, NEOs are more likely to be dangerous than objects kicked around by Jupiter.
we've had more than 5 'city-killer' sized objects pass inside the Moon's orbit.
Fi
Re: (Score:2)
That's 50 m, not km... But what's a few orders of magnitude between friends who just want to give our planet a hug?
Re: (Score:3)
Space is big. You wouldn't believe
I loved the stat that came from Voyager 1.
It's been going 38,000 mph for 35 years. And it's just now leaving our local solar system.
Re:random thoughts... (Score:4, Informative)
It's been going 38,000 mph for 35 years. And it's just now leaving our local solar system.
Another stat I love: How many man-hours of effort have been put into determining safe courses for our probes to pass through the main asteroid belt, in total over all outer-solar-system probes?
Zero.
Re: (Score:2)
Heh, they probably calculated rough odds and said the hell with it, just let it go through.
Re: (Score:2)
The math on the density of the asteroid field was done well before the Voyagers were conceived, and it was based on that math that they decided that no mitigation was necessary. So not literally zero, but rounding... :)
Re:random thoughts... (Score:4, Insightful)
but we are overdue an ELE (Extinction Level Event) by about 15 million years
Welcome to the Monte Carlo Fallacy...
Re: (Score:2)
Or the We Believe The Precision Of Our Numbers fallacy.
Re: (Score:2)
Would you like to buy my asteroid deterrence rock?
Re: (Score:3)
There's a good chance it passed through a keyhole [wikipedia.org] on an earlier pass near Jupiter, and hence struck the planet this time around. I would suspect a keyhole for Earth collision would be much smaller than one for a Jupiter collision. I'm not familiar with the math involved, but I would expect comets and asteroids to strike Jupiter relatively often; Earth, not so frequently.
Re: (Score:2)
Anybody who has access to the object's orbital parameters which show that this would have been with 100% certainty, impossible, please feel free to call me a paranoid freak at this point; but we are overdue an ELE (Extinction Level Event) by about 15 million years (I keep reading around the science journals about ELEs happening about every 50 million years, the last one was what? 65 million years ago (the K-T Event)?
"Overdue" is not a meaningful term in this case. We get about one large impact every 50 million years, but think about it statistically: a Poisson distribution with a mean of 1 has P(0) ~ 0.6, so even at 65 million years the odds are barely 50/50, and in any case, the events are uncorrelated so it doesn't matter how long ago the last one occurred.
When you wake up each morning the odds of you dying in an asteroid impact are the same: about one in a billion. Your odds of dying in a lightning strike or gett
Re: (Score:2)
To be fair, the frightening thing about astroids isn't that the probability: P(me dying in comet impact) is high. What's frightening is that the conditional probability: P(extinction of humanity | me dying in comet impact) is high.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, I like to think of it in terms of risk analysis, as P(event) * Cost(event).
The odds of me stepping on a grass burr walking around my neighborhood is high, but the cost is just a little poke in my toe if I'm wearing sandals.
The odds of an ELE impact is astronomically low, but the cost is astronomically high.
Re: (Score:2)
We should be worried, it could easily, since it obviously came from within Jupiter's orbit, have intersected with Earth.
And?
but we are overdue an ELE (Extinction Level Event) by about 15 million years
So ELE events are extremely uncommon?
So why should we be concerned merely because an object, which has roughly 90% of the mass of the Solar System outside of the Sun, happens to get hit a lot by asteroids and comets? That huge mass is one of the reasons it gets hit so much. The other is the greater number of objects around Jupiter's orbit.
Obligatory (Score:2, Funny)
Wow, the way things are going, in a few years they'll be able to detect blasts from Uranus.
One thing I love about astronomy... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
It's because there's just so much of it...
"Universal time" (Score:2)
Sounds kind of cool.
Re: (Score:1)
(There's a technical distinction, but you can probably ignore it unless you're running a low-tier ntp server. They're never off from each other by more than a couple of seconds, tops.)
Actual video please? (Score:4, Informative)
The linked video is to a very cheesy still image montage about comet/asteroid impacts, and only shows this recent Jupiter impact as a still screenshot of the video playing on someone's computer.
Anybody have a better link? At least to a real still of the event?
Re:Actual video please? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Actual video please? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Here's a link [flickr.com].
Would have thought the editors could have done this...
Thank you Jupiter! (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Just hope we never hear the words "Megamaid has gone from suck to blow!"
Re:Thank you Jupiter! (Score:4, Insightful)
If Jupiter wasn't sweeping up all those comets and asteroids, we'd be getting hit by them.
This is actually part of the "rare Earth" hypothesis. For intelligent life to evolve on a planet, you may need a Jupiter sized "cosmic vacuum cleaner" to keep the ELEs from becoming too frequent.
Re: (Score:3)
Though with Jupiter's potential to pull in TNOs or Oort Cloud objects, it's actually unclear whether Jupiter is a net benefit or detriment.
Jupiter (Score:2)
is the MAN!!
Or or (Score:2)
Jupiter is the MAN, always taking it for the team Earth.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
Two bucks says the video is doctored (Score:1)
Doesn't look real, and too short an event.
Color me a sceptic.
bjd
Re:Two bucks says the video is doctored (2 secs?) (Score:2)
Going to try to spot the scars (Score:3, Interesting)
I'll get out my 18" f/4.5 Obsession tonight and see if I can spot the scars.
The last time this happened, there were black holes in Jupiter's clouds that persisted for several weeks.
Unlike the last time this happened, its perfectly clear here in the Carolinas!
Amateur Astronomers FTW!
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Going to try to spot the scars (Score:4, Informative)
A couple of things to know:
* Aperture (thus ability to gather light) is more important than magnification.
* There are essentially 3 kinds of scopes:
1) Refractor (classic design)
2) Newtonian reflector (more affordable). Newtonians are generally less money and give you more bang for the buck, and Dobsonian Newtonians are even better bargains, though a dob can't track objects as they can't use an equatorial mount. I have an 8" dob, and a small 80mm refractor, but what I'd really like is a
3) Cassegrain: , which is like an optically "folded" newtonian - they're small, light, and powerful, but not as cheap as newtonians.
You can look here for starters: http://www.telescope.com/ [telescope.com] (Orion)
Re: (Score:2)
BTW, I forgot to mention some ballpark prices, but I would venture that a worthwhile beginner's scope could run anywhere from between maybe $200 or $300 to $600 or more, but even that's highly subjective. Then of course, there are the accessories, like add'l eyepieces, which can raise expenditures significantly. Like any good hobby, you can sink more money into it than yo
Re: (Score:1)
My 18" Obsession has both Argo-Navis DSC and Servo-Cat Drives, so it can both go-to and track.
It costs almost as much for the computer and drives as the rest of the scope =-)
I learned my way around the skies star hopping with a 4.5" and 10" dob (which I still have). But it is sure nice to be able to dial in an object, hit go to, observe it for a while, go drink some coffee/tea, come back, and still have the object in the EP.
Re: (Score:2)
3) Cassegrain: , which is like an optically "folded" newtonian - they're small, light, and powerful, but not as cheap as newtonians.
As the owner of a Celestron 11" SCT, I'd say the main advantage is the size. Weight isn't dominated so much by the tube, but by the optics, and a SCT has more optics. Also, a lot of SCTs use fork mounts which can't be easily removed from the tube. So even if the body was lighter, the actual thing you have to pick up and lug around is significantly heavier than an equivalent Newton.
But if size matters, it's definitely the way to go. There's no way I'd get even an 8" Newton into my two-door Toyota Echo.
Re: (Score:1)
I'll second the Orion recommendation - good scopes and very good customer service.
For $500, you can get a nice 8" dob, a couple of good eyepieces, a barlow, some charts, and get a nice start to the skies.
..and here we go (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Except that they don't actually land and instead start emitting whale calls...