Jupiter hit by asteroid or comet in March 2016.

Caught on Video: Jupiter Got Whacked by Yet Another Asteroid or Comet!


Bad Astronomy
The entire universe in blog form
March 29 2016 8:45 AM

Jupiter Got Whacked by Yet Another Asteroid/Comet!

Jupiter impact
Wham! From 665 million km away an asteroid or comet was seen impacting Jupiter (arrowed). Three moons are visible too: From left to right, Europa, Ganymede, and Io.

John McKeon, from the video

On March 17, Gerrit Kernbauer, an amateur astronomer in Mödling, Austria, was taking video of Jupiter using a 20 cm telescope. This is a common technique to capture thousands of frames of an object, so that the best parts of each frame can be teased out to create a high-resolution image, removing the distorting effects of the atmosphere.

But he got more than he expected. At 00:18:33 UTC he captured what looks very much like the impact of a small comet or asteroid into Jupiter! Watch, and keep your eyes on the upper right part of Jupiter’s limb (it might help to change the playback speed to 1/2):


Whoa. The flash is very brief but definitely there. When I first saw the video I thought it looked very much like an impact, but it could have also been a reflection inside the telescope, or many other non-impacty things.

To confirm it, what we really need is a second observer who happened to be looking at the same time.

That was taken by John McKeon, observing with a 28 cm ‘scope in Swords, just north of Dublin, and the timing is consistent with what’s seen in the first video. I would say this is very strong evidence for an actual impact.


As to what did the impacting, that’s less clear. It could be either a small asteroid or a small comet. Given how brief the flash was, and how bright, I’m sure it wasn’t terribly big, probably in the tens-of-meters wide range. I know that sounds small, but remember, Jupiter has ferocious gravity, and velocity is critical here! The energy released by an object slamming into another depends linearly on the mass (double the mass, double the energy), but on the square of the velocity: double the velocity, quadruple the energy.

Phil Plait Phil Plait






Bang. Very, very big bang.


Jupiter impact 2010
Image from the June 2010 impact.

Anthony Wesley


I’ll note that Jupiter has always been getting hit, but the uptick in detections is because our technology is getting better and less expensive. You don’t need a zillion dollar observatory to catch something like this; an off-the-shelf telescope and video camera can do the trick. I’m not saying it’s easy; astrophotography still takes skill and patience.

But there is no lack of talented and eager amateur astronomers out there willing to put in the time. If I had had tech like this when I was in high school and observing in my yard every clear night, I’d have been videoing Jupiter every night it was up! The hard part, though, is actually finding the event in the footage. As you can see, it only lasts for a second or so, which might be hard to spot in hours of footage. Kudos to the two (so far) who did manage to see it.

So it’s worth the call: If you happened to be taking video of Jupiter that night, please let me know. I don’t think any big observatories will be following up with this event (it wasn’t big enough to leave any visible damage in the cloud tops), but the more info we have on it, the better.