Episode 4: Impact on Jupiter




Astronomy Behind the Headlines: A Podcast for Informal Science Educators show

Summary: On July 19, 2009, Australian amateur astronomer Anthony Wesley spotted a dark-colored scar high in the clouds over Jupiter’s southern polar region. It looked like the scars left behind by Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 when its shattered fragments crashed into Jupiter in the summer of 1994. Dr. Heidi B. Hammel is one of the astronomers who have studied the aftermath of this latest collision to learn about how Jupiter’s atmosphere responds to such collisions. In this episode, Dr. Hammel discusses what her team learned from their observations of the collision site using Hubble, Gemini, and Keck cameras.