Galactic smash-up

Image by earthhopper via Flickr

Australian amateur tells of 'one in a million' Jupiter spot

SYDNEY - An Australian amateur stargazer who spotted a "one in a million" impact on Jupiter told of his astonishment yesterday as he chanced upon the Earth-sized dent in its gassy atmosphere.

Mr Anthony Wesley, 44, who has had a life-long passion for the stars, was photographing the planet near midnight on Sunday when he noticed a black mark that had not been there two nights earlier.

The computer programmer, who watches the sky with his 37cm telescope in the backyard of his farm outside Canberra said he first thought it was a shadow cast by one of the planet's 63 moons.

A photo of Jupiter as taken from Canberra on Monday by amateur astronomer Anthony Wesley.

For the next two hours, Mr Wesley frantically photographed the mark, then started emailing astronomers, "to get the professional astronomers in and let them take over".

After Nasa experts spent six hours examining the spot with an infra-red telescope in Hawaii, the verdict came in - Jupiter had been hit, possibly a stray comet or a block of ice which left an Earth-sized dent in its gaseous atmosphere.

Mr Franck Marchis, an astronomer at the Seti Institute said humans should be thankful for Jupiter.

"We should thank our giant planet for suffering for us," he said.

"Its strong gravitational field is acting like a shield protecting us from comets coming from the outer part of the solar system." Agencies

From TODAY, World – Thursday, 23-Jul-2009

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