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Amateur astronomer finds impact evidence on Jupiter

Journal Staff and Wire Report

Published: July 22, 2009

Astronomers were scrambling to get big telescopes turned to Jupiter yesterday to observe the remains of what looks like the biggest smashup in the solar system since fragments of the Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 crashed into the planet in July 1994.

Something -- probably a small comet -- smacked into Jupiter on Sunday, leaving a bruise the size of the Pacific Ocean near its south pole. Just after midnight, Australian time, on Sunday, Jupiter came into view in the eyepiece of Anthony Wesley, an amateur astronomer in Murrumbateman, Australia. The planet was bearing a black eye spookily similar to the ones left in 1994.

Wesley had thought about quitting for the night to watch sports on television, according to an account on his Web site, when he went back outside for another look and found the spot. He e-mailed other astronomers, among them Leigh Fletcher of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.