• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Amateur Astronomer Captures Large Flash As Something Slams Into Jupiter

November 28, 2023 by Deborah Bloomfield

An amateur astronomer has captured an object slamming into Jupiter, producing a bright flash of light as it disintegrated in the gas giant’s atmosphere.

Jupiter is so massive that it technically doesn’t orbit the Sun. With such a gravitational pull, you’d expect it to be regularly impacted by asteroids that make their way to its part of the Solar System, and you’d be right. One model simulation study in 2013 estimated that the planet experiences 12−60 impacts of 5 to 20 meter (16.5 to 65 foot) diameter objects every year. Another study estimated that larger objects of around 1.6 kilometers (1 mile) in diameter impact the planet once every 6,000 years. 

Advertisement

However, actually capturing these impacts as they happen is something of a rarity. At the time of that study, three flashes had been captured by amateur astronomers on the planet, which the team determined to be asteroids.

The latest impact, captured by amateur astronomer Kunihiko Suzuki on November 15, is one of only a small handful of such events recorded on the planet.

ⓘ IFLScience is not responsible for content shared from external sites.

Studying the light curves from such impacts can tell us about the amount of energy released by the object (be it an asteroid or comet) as well as what the object was.

Advertisement

The more we learn about such impacts the better. Many suspect Jupiter plays a role in protecting the inner planets from asteroid impacts, drawing comets and asteroids away from us. 

#asteroids and the Hilda group orbiting the Sun. The second part shows three Hilda group orbits and in the last part, the asteroids are shown orbiting in #Jupiter ‘s co-orbiting frame.
For a smoother version see: https://t.co/1uFriYiRrN pic.twitter.com/iKnmcyt1in— Petr Scheirich (@PScheirich)

ⓘ IFLScience is not responsible for content shared from external sites.

Searching for systems with gas giants may help us find planets that have been similarly shielded from extinction-causing impact events that could wipe out life before it progressed beyond single-celled organisms. However, there have also been suggestions that the planet acts as a slingshot, pulling in objects from further out in the Solar System that would otherwise not have made it closer to the Sun.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Facebook questions British watchdog’s authority to order Giphy sale
  2. S.Africa’s Zuma seeks to replace prosecutor in arms trial
  3. Burro raises $10.9M for autonomous produce field transport
  4. How Much Heat Can A Human Take? Scientists Crack The Critical Limit

Source Link: Amateur Astronomer Captures Large Flash As Something Slams Into Jupiter

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • Mine Spiders Bigger Than A Burger Patty Lurk Deep In Abandoned Caves
  • Blackout Zones: The Places On Earth Where Magnetic Compasses Don’t Work
  • What Is Actually Happening When You Get Blackout Drunk? An Ethically Dubious Experiment Found Out
  • Koalas Get A Shot At Survival As World-First Chlamydia Vaccine Gets Approval
  • We Could See A Black Hole Explode Within 10 Years – Unlocking The Secrets Of The Universe
  • Denisovan DNA May Make Some People Resistant To Malaria
  • Beware The Kellas Cat? This “Cryptid” Turned Out To Be Real, But It Wasn’t What People Thought
  • “They Simply Have A Taste For The Hedonists Among Us”: Festival Mosquito Study Has Some Bad News
  • What Is The Purpose Of Those Lines On Your Towels?
  • The Invisible World Around Us: How Can We Capture And Clean The Air We Breathe?
  • 85-Million-Year-Old Dinosaur Eggs Dated Using “Atomic Clock For Fossils” For The First Time
  • Why Shouldn’t You Kiss Babies? New Study Shows Even Healthy Newborns Can Become Severely Ill With RSV
  • Earth Has A New Quasi-Moon – And It Has Probably Been Around For Decades
  • Want To Kill Your Prey? Do It Feather-Legged Lace Weaver Spider Style And Vomit All Over Them
  • IFLScience The Big Questions: Are We In The Anthropocene?
  • The Wildfire Paradox Affecting 440 Million People Has As Worrying A Solution As You’d Expect
  • AI May Infringe On Your Rights And Insult Your Dignity (Unless We Do Something Soon)
  • How Do You Study Cryptic Species? We’re Finally Lifting The Lid On The World’s Least Understood Mammals
  • Once-In-A-Decade Close Encounter With Hazardous Asteroid 2025 FA22 Approaches
  • With 229 Pairs, This Beautiful Animal Has The Highest Number Of Chromosomes Of Any Animal
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version