Comet SL9 colliding with Jupiter

[Dav333]

Just curious how this impact would have happened ? Since Jupiter has no core & is all dense gas.

Would the pressure have slowed it down until it just exploded? How did the impacts seen from telescope get so big? Was it the extreme winds blowing everything around? Or was it due to a lot more energy with the collision from Jupiter's huge gravity?

thanks

 

[brother time]

Was this the comet that hit last Thursday?

 

[CosmicCrunch]

Jupiter does actually have a core, its very small rocky one

 

[D H]

Dav333 is talking about Shoemaker-Levy 9, which collided with Jupiter in July 1994. It hit Jupiter's atmosphere. Look at it this way, Dav333: Most meteoroids which collide with the Earth don't hit the Earth's surface. They burn up long before they reach the surface. Jupiter's atmosphere is much denser and much, much, much deeper than is the Earth's. Those comet fragments had no chance of reaching Jupiter's core. They imparted all of their kinetic energy to Jupiter's atmosphere.

 

[Dav333]

thanks for replies.

I only say Jupiter has no solid rocky core as I watched a recent documentary extreme planets I think it was & it says its core is some strange liquid metallic hydrogen conducting electrical currents.

 

[Astronuc]

More collisions with Jupiter

When the OP first posted, a new collision with Jupiter had occurred

Bright Fireball Slams Into Jupiter
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/06/100604-science-space-jupiter-impact-flash-asteroid/

and there had been a collision last year
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/07/090721-jupiter-impact-spot.html

Recently on Aug 20, another collision was caught by an amateur astronomer.

Third Jupiter Fireball Spotted
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/08/100824-jupiter-fireballs-impacts-meteors-comets-space-science/

Jupiter may be collecting objects more oftent than previously thought

 

[russ_watters]

It's cool that so many are being detected: Amateur astrophotography has gotten so good and so pervasive, that there is almost always a telescope with a camera pointed at Jupiter these days, ready to capture such events.