Web Hosting by Netfirms | Free Domain Names by Netfirms

July 1994

Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 (named after its discoverers Eugene and Carolyn Shoemaker and David Levy)  got a little to close on one of its orbits of Jupiter and fragmented in July of 1992.  The close pass changed its trajectory  and put it on a collision coarse with same planet. 

SL9 collided with Jupiter in the first ever observed collision between two objects in our solar system. Earth-based telescopes around the world, as well as the Hubble Space Telescope, obtained spectacular imagery of impact zones and plumes (or fireballs). The impacts occurred on the side of Jupiter facing away from Earth and then rotated into view a few hours later. The Galileo spacecraft had a more direct view of the impacts as they occurred. The first impact (fragment A) occurred shortly before 5:32 EDT on July 16, 1994 and the last impact (fragment W) occurred July 22, 1994 at 2:59:45 EDT. Comet fragments were labeled  A to W.