Jupiter in the firing line, again!

Amateur astronomers Anthony Wesley and Christopher Go last night independently captured on camera an object slamming into the gas giant Jupiter.

A colour RGB image processed from Anthony Wesley's data collected last night. Image: Anthony Wesley.

The impact occurred at 2031 UTC on 3 June and was first alerted by Anthony Wesley in Australia, who also captured the impact into Jupiter nearly a year ago. Coincidentally, his observation was reported on the same day that NASA released a report on the July 2009 impact event.

Last night Christopher Go, who is based in the Philippines, was also taking video of Jupiter at the same time, and discovered he too had captured the impact flash, which lasted just a few seconds.

Wesley tells Astronomy Now that other observatories are now trying to arrange viewing times all at short notice, which will help scientists to see if there is an impact scar, and perhaps try and determine just exactly what hit Jupiter.