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Jupiter was hit again.
Brazilian observer José Luis Pereira captured a flash of light over the largest planet in the solar system on Monday evening (September 13), commemorating the fiery death of a space rock high in the Jovian atmosphere.
“I am a diligent planetary observer,” Pereira told Space.com in a written statement Tuesday (September 14). “When the planets Jupiter, Saturn and Mars are in opposition, I try to make images in all possible nights of clear skies. [of] the planet Jupiter, my favorite. “
Related: Amazing views of the Juno spacecraft on Jupiter (photos)
Following: The best telescopes of 2021 for beginners and planet viewing
On Sunday (September 12) and Monday, Pereira installed its equipment in São Caetano do Sul, in the Brazilian state of São Paulo, in the southeast of the country. As on many other nights, his goal was to photograph Jupiter and capture videos for the DeTeCt program, which seeks to spot and characterize impacts on the giant planet.
The weather didn’t seem to be cooperating on Monday night, but Pereira persevered, collecting a series of 25 Jupiter videos, with no time gaps between them.
“To my surprise, in the first video, I noticed a different glow on the planet, but I didn’t pay much attention to it because I thought it might be related to the settings adopted, and I continued to watch normally, ”Pereira wrote. . “In order not to stop the current captures for fear of the weather conditions deteriorating, I did not check the first video.”
He put the videos in the DeTeCt program, then went to bed.
“I only checked the result on the morning of the 14th, when the program alerted me to the high probability of impact and verified that there was indeed a recording in the first video of the night,” wrote Pereira.
He then passed the information on to Marc Delcroix of the French Astronomical Society, who confirmed that Pereira had indeed recorded footage of an impact that occurred Monday at 6:39 p.m. EDT (10:39 p.m. GMT).
“For me, it was a moment of great emotion, because I was looking for a record of [such an] event for many years, ”Pereira wrote.
Its observing setup consists of the following, he added: a 275mm f / 5.3 Newtonian telescope with a QHY5III462C camera, plus a Televue Powermate 5x (f / 26.5) eyepiece and lens filter. IRUV cutoff. If you’re looking to learn more about how to photograph planets, check out our beginner’s guide to astrophotography for the basics. You can also see how the Nikon Z6 camera compares to astrophotography here.
You can see more of Pereira’s astronomical works on Flickr and Youtube.
A large and often beaten planet
Because it orbits near the main asteroid belt and has a strong gravitational pull, Jupiter is quite often clubbed. In July 1994, for example, fragments of the Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 crashed into Jupiter, creating large bruises in the planet’s thick atmosphere that lasted for months.
These scars opened a rare window to Jupiter under the cloud tops, and professional astronomers took the opportunity. They studied the impact sites with a variety of powerful telescopes, adding to our understanding of the gas giant’s atmospheric makeup.
Another high level smashup occurred 15 years later, when an impactor pierced a scar the size of the Pacific Ocean in the swirling air of Jupiter. Like the Shoemaker-Levy 9 lesions, this imperfection persisted long enough for professional astronomers to mobilize.
But it doesn’t seem like they are so lucky with the newly observed impact.
“The site is clearly resolved and no visible scars have been left (as in previous impact lightning events.) The object was probably too small to reach the deeper atmosphere,” the astrophotographer said. Damian Peach. wrote on Twitter Wednesday, where he posted a beautiful photo of a healed Jupiter, taken an hour after being hit.
Mike Wall is the author of “The low“(Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book on the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.
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