A hobby astronomer managed to capture an impact on the planet Jupiter on video. For him it is a moment of great emotion.
When the amateur astronomer José Luis Pereira set up his equipment on a clear September night in 2021, he had no idea what he would get in front of the lens a short time later. The weather wasn’t playing well, but he still wanted to give it a try, as he told Space.com: “I’m an avid planet watcher. When the planets Jupiter, Saturn and Mars are in opposition, I try to take pictures with a clear sky every night. Especially the planet Jupiter, my favorite planet. “
On September 12th and 13th, Pereira set up his equipment in São Caetano do Sul in the Brazilian state of São Paulo. He wanted to take photos and videos of Jupiter for a program called DeTeCt, which examines recordings for impacts on planets and evaluates them. It was developed by Marc Delcroix, President of the Planetary Observation Commission within the Société Astronomique de France.
Impact on Jupiter: Brazilian films event
Even if the weather was suboptimal that night, Pereira took 25 videos of Jupiter. “To my surprise, I saw a different appearance on the planet in the first video, but I didn’t care much about it,” Pereira told Space.com. Fearing that the weather conditions could worsen, he did not stop recording to look at it. Without viewing, he fed the recordings into the DeTeCt program and went to sleep.
The next morning, September 14th, he looked at the recordings because the program had warned him that there was a high probability that an impact had been recorded. That was also immediately verified. He passed the information on to Delcroix, who also confirmed that there was an impact at 17:39 (local time) on September 13. It shows up as a small white point in the equatorial area of the giant gas planet.
Hobby astronomer films impact: ESA shares it on Twitter
“It was a moment of great emotion for me because I have been waiting for such an event to be recorded for years,” Space.com quotes the amateur astronomer. As the Société Astronomique de France announced, several other observers were also able to record the impact of Jupiter. The European Space Agency ESA also shared Pereira’s photo of the impact via their Twitter account:
Light on at Jupiter! Anyone home? This bright impact flash was spotted yesterday on the giant planet by astronomer José Luis Pereira.
Not a lot of info on the impacting object yet but its likely to be large and/or fast!
Thanks Jupiter for taking the hit☄️#PlanetaryDefence pic.twitter.com/XLFzXjW4KQ
— ESA Operations (@esaoperations) September 14, 2021
According to ESA, there isn’t much information about the object that hit Jupiter. But it had to be either big and / or fast to generate such a flash of light. “Thanks for taking the punch,” wrote the ESA. Because Jupiter is considered a protective shield for the earth and other planets. Because it is so huge, it has a higher gravitational pull and can virtually fish asteroids and comets out of space before they hit elsewhere. It is also closer to the Milky Way’s asteroid belt. So Jupiter has to deal with impacts more often. (ial)
Only recently did researchers gain new knowledge about the “red spot” on Jupiter *.
Header list image: © José Luis Pereira; Marc Delcroix
