An amateur astronomer captured the moment a space rock collided with Jupiter, creating a flash of light on the planet’s surface.
In the video recorded by José Luis Pereira, a Brazilian amateur astronomer, the space rock struck Jupiter’s upper atmosphere and spectacularly shattered.
“At first, I noticed a flash on Jupiter but didn’t pay much attention to it,” Pereira stated.
It was only after he uploaded the video to a program designed to detect impacts on Jupiter, provided by the Laboratory & Planetary Virtual Observatory, that Pereira realized what had appeared in the video.
The space rock collided with Jupiter’s upper atmosphere and spectacularly shattered.
Pereira shared his discovery with expert Marc Delcroix from the French Astronomical Society. This expert confirmed that the video recorded by the Brazilian amateur astronomer documented the interaction between a space rock and Jupiter.
Due to its extremely strong gravitational force, Jupiter attracts smaller objects towards it. This is why scientists refer to the second-largest planet in the Solar System as a “vacuum cleaner.”
The most famous collision recorded to date occurred in 1994 when the Shoemaker-Levy comet crashed into Jupiter. Shoemaker-Levy broke into many smaller pieces and gradually fell into Jupiter’s upper atmosphere between July 16 and July 22 of that year.
The recent impact of the space rock on Jupiter was not as significant as that of Shoemaker-Levy, but it still caught the attention of astronomers.
Pereira himself was thrilled with his discovery.
“For me, it was an incredibly emotional moment because I had been searching for a record of such an event for many years,” Pereira expressed.
