FIRST EARTH-BASED DETECTION OF A SUPERBOLIDE ON JUPITER
- Universidad del PaIs Vasco, 48013 Bilbao (Spain)
- Acquerra Pty. Ltd., 82 Merryville Drive, Murrumbateman, NSW 2582 (Australia)
- Physics Department-University of San Carlos, Cebu City (Philippines)
- Astronomy Department, 601 Campbell Hall, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720 (United States)
- Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics, Clarendon Laboratory, University of Oxford, Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3PU (United Kingdom)
- Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, NM 87185 (United States)
- Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91109 (United States)
- Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD 20771 (United States)
- Division of Physics, Mathematics, and Astronomy, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125 (United States)
- Gemini Observatory, c/o AURA Casilla 603, La Serena (Chile)
- Space Science Institute, 4750 Walnut Avenue, Suite 205, Boulder, CO 80301 (United States)
- Boston University, Boston, MA 02215 (United States)
Cosmic collisions on planets cause detectable optical flashes that range from terrestrial shooting stars to bright fireballs. On 2010 June 3 a bolide in Jupiter's atmosphere was simultaneously observed from the Earth by two amateur astronomers observing Jupiter in red and blue wavelengths. The bolide appeared as a flash of 2 s duration in video recording data of the planet. The analysis of the light curve of the observations results in an estimated energy of the impact of (0.9-4.0) x 10{sup 15} J which corresponds to a colliding body of 8-13 m diameter assuming a mean density of 2 g cm{sup -3}. Images acquired a few days later by the Hubble Space Telescope and other large ground-based facilities did not show any signature of aerosol debris, temperature, or chemical composition anomaly, confirming that the body was small and destroyed in Jupiter's upper atmosphere. Several collisions of this size may happen on Jupiter on a yearly basis. A systematic study of the impact rate and size of these bolides can enable an empirical determination of the flux of meteoroids in Jupiter with implications for the populations of small bodies in the outer solar system and may allow a better quantification of the threat of impacting bodies to Earth. The serendipitous recording of this optical flash opens a new window in the observation of Jupiter with small telescopes.
- OSTI ID:
- 21452790
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal Letters, Journal Name: Astrophysical Journal Letters Journal Issue: 2 Vol. 721; ISSN 2041-8205
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
BLADE: An Automated Framework for Classifying Light Curves from the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies Fireball Database
Solar system events at high spatial resolution