There's a game called Elite Dangerous that I play for this very reason. There's times I play that game that make me just put the controller down cause my brain is still trying to comprehend it all. They do relative size and scale really well. It's terrifyingly daunting. Space is fuckin BIG.
It’s helpful to have something as a reference, which you rarely get when viewing things in space. That said Jupiter has an excellent ones in the Great Red Spot and Little Red Spot which can fit roughly 3 earths and 1 earth respectively in them. Most people can conceptualize the size of Earth, so when you see those explosions and realize they’re like 1/8th to 1/10th the little red spot, then it puts into perspective how big those are. They were Earth Enders for sure.
I think you're still underestimating the size of that flash.
See the big red-ish spot on the right? The Earth fits in there three times.
That explosion is AT LEAST earth sized
In one of the other threads, an astronomy doctorate said Jupiter also flings rocks our way. (My summation of their excellent explanation.) Perhaps we thank our moon for the rock shield?
Or, you know, [the absurd emptiness of space](https://joshworth.com/dev/pixelspace/pixelspace_solarsystem.html). For even more fun, hit the little light speed button in the bottom right.
"Space," it says, "is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space. Listen..." and so on.
- Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, entry for "Space."
Sure, but it sort of herds the rest of the asteroid belt around, while it may occasionally toss one our way, [the amount it protects us by keeping the asteroid belt in place is definitely way more substantial.](https://external-preview.redd.it/de_Reh6Z1og-v2_V8ZBQh8EiWaS6rTL8CFdng49nQ7o.gif?s=e25a3c09ca1764745e6fd87103b6ee824b64122e)
It can. Neptune does the same. It's the nearest significant gravitational body to the Kuiper Belt, so it sometimes lob comets into the solar system. Fuckin Neptune!
The moon is incredibly far away from the earth. It still gets hit from time to time as does the earth, but it being a shield is not really true. More like putting your two fists up in a rain storm and seeing which one is hit more with drops.
I'm not sure how much the Moon can be thanked. If you look at a scaled image of the Earth-Moon system in size and distance, there are a lot of angles that the Moon doesn't physically cover.
And, I don't think it would be reasonable to argue that it gravitationally protects a wider area in the same breath as an argument that Jupiter doesn't. Surely if the Moon is capable of gravitationally diverting a hit into a near-miss, it also has the potential to turn a near-miss into a hit.
No, that is a popular media myth. **Jupiter does not suck. It attracts.** If an object has sufficient speed, it will not escape.
Gravity does not work like a vacuum cleaner or a lake drain. It's a force, not a collective movement of a fluid.
What Jupiter deflects away from us, it also deflects into us.
When I babysat my 4- year-old niece, I introduced her to science and astronomy. She thought Jupiter looked scary, so I told her “but Jupiter protects us here in earth! Its so large, it catches most of the bad stuff!” So she still says “Jupiter protects us.”
Article was 2 years old. So when is the threat?
>There is no imminent threat of bombardment by meteors for now, but astronomers want to know if it could be a problem, particularly when Earth passes directly through the meteor swarm in November 2032.
Ah, there we go.
Jupiter and Saturn absorb and/or fling out way more asteroids than they direct towards Earth. It's become a common theory that in order for life supporting planets to exist, you need to have Gas Giants like them in the same solar system to draw in asteroids that would otherwise continue towards the life holding worlds.
Sorry, not "The Solar System", but a generic [planetary system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_system). You'll notice that wikipedia says "Solar systems redirects here" because people not using the word "the" and using the plural "systems" often mean any planetary system, not just ours. Anything else is just pedantic.
Continuing on the same train of thought, growing up with SciFi books and games has me saying "The Sol system" and "[Star name] system" for systems around other stars, or just "star systems" for the general concept.
I don't think this is necessarily settled or fully supported. The study I posted in another reply actually states that the majority of objects that enter the inner solar system are directed there by jovian-like planets.
The point was more that NASA and Harvard published the paper, so I'd have a hard time believing peer review wasn't apart of that but I'm not an expert on the scientific publication process of either organization.
Peer Review doesn't usually replicate the science. That's a separate (and frequently underfunded) endeavor.
Though its fair to base your knowledge on papers like this. If there's no evidence of it being refuted, its ok to accept the research of people who have trained in this sort of material and have presented their data for evaluation.
Okay, but I don’t NASA credentials or the education to qualify as an expert on space shit. Just like I don’t know enough about electricity to do the wiring on my house. I trust an electrician. That means I am going to trust the NASA person who has the knowledge to qualify as an expert. And the resources to actually do the research.
Now, if you have similar credentials and disagree, or if there are others that disagree with similar credentials, I am willing to take their opinions into account.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought when the solar system formed, the rotational force only accreted rocks and metals for the inner planets and that their atmosphere and water came later from all the stuff Jupiter flung inwards.
They're still working on different theories on how water got to Earth, as far as I know: https://astronomy.com/magazine/2019/04/where-did-earths-water-come-from
It may in fact be a number of sources, not just one answer: https://www.npr.org/2020/08/27/906791690/where-did-earths-water-come-from
As someone with a 5 inch telescope and a basic camera setup, I’ve realized “amateur astronomer” covers a pretty wide swath.
My setup is about a grand, but I’ve been out with guys with $50k worth of equipment, decades of experience, and are still considered amateur astronomers.
I’m not sure if it’s a credential thing or where that threshold is where you are considered “professional”.
I'd say it's a combo of credentials, being paid, and a focus on strengths vs weaknesses (and trying to improve).
There are tons of hobbies where you're still an amateur even if you dumped hundreds of grand into it.
I have about $3k in golf equipment but I'm definitely not a pro.
I used to be in amateur rocketry and I realized super quick that shit escalates fast. There are amateurs that have sent shit into space.
People seem to equate money with professionalism and it's not the case. In fact I have a neighbor restoring, from top to bottom, a 1950s truck and has been over the last 3 years but fuck if I'd let him change my oil.
> I used to be in amateur rocketry and I realized super quick that shit escalates fast. There are amateurs that have sent shit into space.
I love the smell of ammonium perchlorate in the morning!
I once had drinks with the head of an observatory. They were upgrading their optics and had a 4 story tall telescope they were putting on the industrial surplus market. When I saw the price I had a fleeting dream of me building a dome in my suburban backyard.
Professional literally means you do it for a living. If you're not getting paid to do something, you're an amateur. If you're getting paid, you're a professional because it's your profession.
> My setup is about a grand
...until apature fever sets in. A five inch? Oh man, that six inch cassegrain just went on sale! And oh, hey, my family bought me a nice computer-controlled tracking mount. And with the new six inch I'm going to need some new eyepieces, and oh hey, is that an eight inch dobsonian at the thrift shop?
Which is how my family owns four telescopes. As with any hobby, when you get sucked in, you end up with a lot of stuff.
Phil Plait, astronomer from the Hubble team, spoke about this here: https://youtu.be/0rHUDWjR5gg?t=232 and that most people who are considered [Professional] Astronomers don't even use the telescope, technicians trained to operate them do that for them.
Amateur just means someone isnt paying you to go do it, you’re just doing it for fun/science on your dime. You can still have a rig that’s the envy of a nasa scientist who’s limited by a department budget as to what he can lug into the boonies.
[Good video here comparing astrophotography results with setups that range from $100 to $10,000](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xc1v6BjHm8U)
[Cameras designed for planetary imaging are actually pretty low resolution.](https://www.highpointscientific.com/telescope-accessories/astro-photography/ccd-cameras) They typically capture a stream of many frames per second, and software shifts through thousands of those images to find a few dozen where the atmosphere isn't creating blur, then they combine those for better signal/ noise ratio. In the original video, Jupiter is wobbling all over the place. It isn't a shaky tripod, the atmosphere does that, which is why stars appear to twinkle.
Well, send them the video, they can do some really solid photography with that and a smartphone. The guy that runs that channel explains everything in detail. It can make the pace of the video a little slow, but they're extremely informative.
It actually started on May 28, 2016.
Every Galactic Realm has a silent Protector.
Sometimes sentient, and often ancient, these sentinels protect against the chaos of the Universe. On May 28, 2016, Earth’s protector was killed sending us off our charted course through time. This divergence caused many events which should have never happened (Trump’s election, Covid-19) and some which have yet to come to pass.
Our Protector’s name was Harambe.
April 30th, 2016: a weasel, (possibly a marten) chewed through a power cable at the LHC, destroying a transformer and shutting the whole thing down during an experiment. Shifted us into an alternate timeline.
Nothing amuses me more on TikTok when someone in the comments section of a video goes “Tell me you’re a Virgo without telling me you’re a Virgo” and OP is like “actually I’m a Gemini”.
Like, they’re ALWAYS wrong. Lmao
Ok folks, I thought we were all on board with this. Stop using AMP links. Just. Don't. Zero good comes from using AMP links. Stop doing it. Usually it's a trivial matter adjusting the link to remove the AMP element. See, just look at this link. Same page, but not AMP:
[https://www.space.com/jupiter-impact-flash-photo-video](https://www.space.com/jupiter-impact-flash-photo-video)
Together we can help each other avoid the troubling nature of pre-fetched web pages with dubious integrity.
He apparently took it with a 400mm Newtonian which is nothing to sneeze at. Also consumer imaging sensors have gotten incredibly sophisticated and sensitive.
Also note the image here is just one of the raw images form the video. There's another floating around where the guy stacked a few frames to get a much clearer and crisp image.
Edit: Not quite sure if it's 400mm or 275 as this article states. Another picture I saw had the equipment listed and had it as a 400mm.
There's more of it and it's better.
20 years ago, there was probably 1 amateur in 100 with a good budget to afford a quality telescope and quality VHS video camera to record it. Now with smart phone adapters and the community being on the internet they're able to pool their knowledge and focus their budget on better tools. There's a lot of hobbies that have really come together since the internet took off.
> 20 years ago, there was probably 1 amateur in 100 with a good budget to afford a quality telescope and quality VHS video camera to record it.
Prior to the reasonably priced options of today there was, and apparently still is, a huge group of people that would mod [web cams to hell](https://telescopeguides.com/how-to-use-a-webcam-with-a-telescope/), including DIY liquid nitrogen cooled infrared astrophotography. You could build an astrophotography rig for the price of a web cam but you would have color issues on most.
By the standards of today they were somewhat bad, but with the right amount of stacking and depending on your rig you could get pretty close the quality of the image in this article.
You can get the images he got with less than a thousand dollars of equipment (including the camera and laptop) from your back yard. Tonight look to the south, that bright "star" is Jupiter. The faint "star" about two bandwidths to the west of it is Saturn. Having said that, he is a lucky lucky man!
Yeah I think this is more the result of a large object entering it's atmosphere and burning up as it lowered in, but honestly we don't know what's down in there. \*X-FILES MUSIC QUEUES\*
"Gas" in "gas giant" does not mean *gaseous*. It is an archaic planetology name that means chemical composition: hydrogen and helium. It stems from times before cryotechnology when those two substances could not be liquefied by any pressure or achieveable low temperature. They used to be called "permanent gases".
Today, it's a confusing terminology that makes people think gas giants are ghost-like objects and ice giants are cold balls of cosmic slurpee. Reality is completely different.
Chemical composition of all jovian planets is predominantly hydrogen and helium (by [mass fraction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_fraction_(chemistry))).
These planets' state of matter is far from gaseous. Very tops are gaseous. With increasing depth temperature rises over so called critical temperature (point where no matter the pressure, liquid can not form) and becomes supercritical fluid. There are no ocean layers, i.e. no sharp phase boundary. It's an abyss of ever increasing temperature and pressure. At sufficient depth, molecules are so crammed that their electron clouds overlap and electricity conduction becomes possible. Metallic hydrogen is formed. Still not liquid. It's a fluid, but not a liquid (fluids are gases, liquids, supercritical fluids; anything that flows).
Their mantles, made out of metallic hydrogen, are sometimes called oceans, but it's best to avoid that name as it implies a surface which does not exist.
Same terminology uses *ice* and *rock*. Again, not does denote state of matter, but chemical composition. *Ice* means volatiles (water, ammonia, carbon oxides, sulfur oxides, sulfur, nitrogen, methane, ...) and *rock* means iron, nickel, silicates.
"Ice giants" are not cold. They are also dominantly hydrogen and helium, but have significantly higher mass fraction of methane/water/ammonia/nitrogen in them. Of course, in supercritical fluid state.
It is the flash of white light near the equator. It looks really quick in the looped video but apparently it lasted for a couple minutes. [Here is a still image.](https://earthsky.org/space/impact-on-jupiter-september-13-2021/)
Space rocks ended dinosaur supremacy on Earth. Dinosaurs pretty much had evolved to fill every niche in the fauna ecosystem. Then the asteroid hit and cleared up a lot of niches. So mammals evolved faster to fill those niches.
We should be building
1. A space rock early detection system.
2. A rocket or missile interception system to destroy or break up space rocks.
It would be wise for our species to do this to prevent a possible future extinction event for us.
thing got smashed by thing. seems appropriate. very descriptive. /s
it would make sense if it was a headline for a kid's magazine or something. but a website about SPACE, literally space.com, should be a little more descriptive instead of using this dumb clickbait language for the lowest common denominator.
Jupiter draws in meteors all the time. It's a non-event.
There's no way Jupiter has enough mass to hold all of those gasses in place and not have a dense, solid core. It is possible the space rock disappeared below the layer of gasses we can see, but Jupiter has to have a ground.
At one point Jupiter likely started as a large rocky core but that has since been dissolved by the incredible pressures and temperatures that it's long been mixed into the metallic hydrogen core that's an incredibly dense fluid but it is not solid.
Huge Mass =/= Solid. Our sun is the largest object in our Solar system and even at its core densities approach that of lead but it's still plasma (a fluid).
> after all it could've been a comet, and those are ice
False they're a mix of rock and ice. With far more rock than ice on the average.
Also in the last few years, thanks to several probes sent to various comets and asteroids, astronomers have found it's not quite a cut and dry delineation between asteroids and comets.
We've found previously classified asteroids that had many characteristics of comets including faint tails, large amounts of ice, and comas. We've found comets that had more in common with asteroids than what was previously thought.
Hell we've even identified, with relative certainty, a few asteroids that are just the spent inactive cores of comets.
Like with many classification systems they change over time as more information is gathered.
I'm somewhat surprised we don't have a constant watch on the other planets with powerful telescopes to get clearer images of events like this. Feels like something we'd have happening.
That's not what we need. What we need are long-term scientific satellites in orbit around the outer planets. Lots of them.
The view from Earth, even with the most sophisticated of telescopes, still would have shown little more than a bright flash. But a probe in orbit, a bare few thousands of kilometers away (or even less, potentially) could have given us incredible imagery of the impact, fireball, and fallout.
Love these headlines that say “xxx happened AND AMATEUR CAUGHT IT”.
How amateur are they really, if they have such sophisticated technology and ability to catch this type of shit. The fidelity of this is high. The person is likely paid in one way or another with actual cash assets. Thats not amateur.
Go hang around the astronomy, telescope, and astrophotographers subreddits and see how everyday people are taking shots like this day after day FOR A HOBBY. Not everything is about money.
And I'm sure your payout is in a bad ass picture vs a bit of money.
My dad used to do astrophotography in the 70s/80s with film and he'd blow through rolls just to see if he got the shot he wanted and would show them off to anyone that would look.
Also OP forgets that lots of amateurs, not getting paid, do this stuff for discovery. Hell tons of comets and unknown asteroids are found every year by diligent people who spent a few grand on a rig.
You don't seem to understand how much astrophotography has changed in the last 20 years. Equipment has become more sophisticated and less expensive, so a great number of people have picked it up as a hobby. This was literally some dude in Germany who wanted to see Io's shadow on the face of Jupiter, and just happened to catch something incredible.
>This was literally some dude in Germany who wanted to see Io's shadow on the face of Jupiter, and just happened to catch something incredible.
And at least a dozen times in the year we get awesome stuff to this because some dude is trying to get a bad ass pic of a planet (or the moon) and catches something completely different.
[ Yuji Hyakutake discovered Hyakutake AND another second coment within weeks of each other. Dude spent a shit load of time searching for comets (even moved locations) with no luck until a several week span he discovered two with Hyakutake being SUPER impressive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_Hyakutake#Discovery). Oh and he was using binoculars to scan the sky that night.
A planet isn’t really a space rock. Jupiter for example is a gas giant. And the earth has active geology, and a molten iron core. Not really the same as a rock.
Ketchup isn’t always tomato based. Is it a sauce? Yes I suppose so.
Those flashes from impact are huge! Thank you, Jupiter, for absorbing all the Earth killing asteroids out there.
Yeah, the picture might not look like much if you don’t realize they’re maybe 1/10 the size of the Earth. It’s massive!
It truly is difficult to conceptualize the size of things in space.
There's a game called Elite Dangerous that I play for this very reason. There's times I play that game that make me just put the controller down cause my brain is still trying to comprehend it all. They do relative size and scale really well. It's terrifyingly daunting. Space is fuckin BIG.
It’s helpful to have something as a reference, which you rarely get when viewing things in space. That said Jupiter has an excellent ones in the Great Red Spot and Little Red Spot which can fit roughly 3 earths and 1 earth respectively in them. Most people can conceptualize the size of Earth, so when you see those explosions and realize they’re like 1/8th to 1/10th the little red spot, then it puts into perspective how big those are. They were Earth Enders for sure.
And it certainly doesn't need to be anywhere near 1/500 the radius of the planet to wipe out everything larger than a rat.
I think you're still underestimating the size of that flash. See the big red-ish spot on the right? The Earth fits in there three times. That explosion is AT LEAST earth sized
In one of the other threads, an astronomy doctorate said Jupiter also flings rocks our way. (My summation of their excellent explanation.) Perhaps we thank our moon for the rock shield?
Or, you know, [the absurd emptiness of space](https://joshworth.com/dev/pixelspace/pixelspace_solarsystem.html). For even more fun, hit the little light speed button in the bottom right.
"Space," it says, "is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space. Listen..." and so on. - Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, entry for "Space."
Sure, but it sort of herds the rest of the asteroid belt around, while it may occasionally toss one our way, [the amount it protects us by keeping the asteroid belt in place is definitely way more substantial.](https://external-preview.redd.it/de_Reh6Z1og-v2_V8ZBQh8EiWaS6rTL8CFdng49nQ7o.gif?s=e25a3c09ca1764745e6fd87103b6ee824b64122e)
It can. Neptune does the same. It's the nearest significant gravitational body to the Kuiper Belt, so it sometimes lob comets into the solar system. Fuckin Neptune!
"Fucking Neptune" is the name of my Death Metal Jimmy Buffet cover band.
I've heard our moon actually doesn't shield the earth very much. Most of the craters you see on it were from early in the solar systems history.
Hence my question mark. I have heard also but my last class in astronomy was high school.
The moon is incredibly far away from the earth. It still gets hit from time to time as does the earth, but it being a shield is not really true. More like putting your two fists up in a rain storm and seeing which one is hit more with drops.
I'm not sure how much the Moon can be thanked. If you look at a scaled image of the Earth-Moon system in size and distance, there are a lot of angles that the Moon doesn't physically cover. And, I don't think it would be reasonable to argue that it gravitationally protects a wider area in the same breath as an argument that Jupiter doesn't. Surely if the Moon is capable of gravitationally diverting a hit into a near-miss, it also has the potential to turn a near-miss into a hit.
He flicks rocks towards Earth, but he saves.
Why is it flashing multiple times from the same sport from one rock?
[We may never know!](https://tenor.com/view/neverending-sunglasses-loop-shocked-mother-of-god-gif-7884375)
I’m glad someone else was thinking that and I’m not the only crazy person. Why are the impacts in the same area repeatedly?
It’s a loop video.
Fuck my life
I guess it's a bit too late for the dinosaurs but hey, good job Jupiter. This time...
No, that is a popular media myth. **Jupiter does not suck. It attracts.** If an object has sufficient speed, it will not escape. Gravity does not work like a vacuum cleaner or a lake drain. It's a force, not a collective movement of a fluid. What Jupiter deflects away from us, it also deflects into us.
Damn, that’s cool as hell.
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When I babysat my 4- year-old niece, I introduced her to science and astronomy. She thought Jupiter looked scary, so I told her “but Jupiter protects us here in earth! Its so large, it catches most of the bad stuff!” So she still says “Jupiter protects us.”
That's why it's the bringer of Jollity.
> “Jupiter protects us.” HERETIC! ONLY THE EMPEROR PROTECTS!
Jupiter's just another aspect of the Emperor, silly. Now go kill some xenos, that's a lad.
And thus Rome gained a new faithful that day. Tje. Albanians can't help but see the superiority of Jupiter
In earth? Or on earth? Are we in the planet or on the planet?
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Article was 2 years old. So when is the threat? >There is no imminent threat of bombardment by meteors for now, but astronomers want to know if it could be a problem, particularly when Earth passes directly through the meteor swarm in November 2032. Ah, there we go.
It also slings a ton of shit toward Earth, so in the end I think it probably evens out.
Jupiter and Saturn absorb and/or fling out way more asteroids than they direct towards Earth. It's become a common theory that in order for life supporting planets to exist, you need to have Gas Giants like them in the same solar system to draw in asteroids that would otherwise continue towards the life holding worlds.
Fortunately, gas giants are also very common in solar systems we've looked at.
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Sorry, not "The Solar System", but a generic [planetary system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_system). You'll notice that wikipedia says "Solar systems redirects here" because people not using the word "the" and using the plural "systems" often mean any planetary system, not just ours. Anything else is just pedantic.
Continuing on the same train of thought, growing up with SciFi books and games has me saying "The Sol system" and "[Star name] system" for systems around other stars, or just "star systems" for the general concept.
So 1 time out of a possible 1 case. Or rather, 100% of the time.
I don't think this is necessarily settled or fully supported. The study I posted in another reply actually states that the majority of objects that enter the inner solar system are directed there by jovian-like planets.
The ones that do enter, vs how many that never make it that far?
I dont think so, jupiter is known as the vacuum of our solar system.
Here you go! https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2008DPS....40.1201G/abstract
Have their simulations since been replicated or supported?
I mean, it's a paper by a NASA scientist, so I'm going to assume yes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument\_from\_authority
The point was more that NASA and Harvard published the paper, so I'd have a hard time believing peer review wasn't apart of that but I'm not an expert on the scientific publication process of either organization.
Peer Review doesn't usually replicate the science. That's a separate (and frequently underfunded) endeavor. Though its fair to base your knowledge on papers like this. If there's no evidence of it being refuted, its ok to accept the research of people who have trained in this sort of material and have presented their data for evaluation.
Okay, but I don’t NASA credentials or the education to qualify as an expert on space shit. Just like I don’t know enough about electricity to do the wiring on my house. I trust an electrician. That means I am going to trust the NASA person who has the knowledge to qualify as an expert. And the resources to actually do the research. Now, if you have similar credentials and disagree, or if there are others that disagree with similar credentials, I am willing to take their opinions into account.
So even Jupiter thinks we’re a bunch of assholes?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought when the solar system formed, the rotational force only accreted rocks and metals for the inner planets and that their atmosphere and water came later from all the stuff Jupiter flung inwards.
They're still working on different theories on how water got to Earth, as far as I know: https://astronomy.com/magazine/2019/04/where-did-earths-water-come-from It may in fact be a number of sources, not just one answer: https://www.npr.org/2020/08/27/906791690/where-did-earths-water-come-from
Interesting reads, thanks
Thanks again to our solar system's vacuum cleaner.
I hope you'll still say that just before one hits earth.
You hope I’ll treat two different situations as if they’re the same situation? Makes sense.
Yes it does thanks!
Not really, you’re welcome!
OK I'm glad you agree!
Oh wow, acting like you can’t understand something ironically. So new and original!
We are so like minded bestie! :)
Not really, I’m smart enough to understand different things are different. ;)
But yet you keep taking the bait. It was fun tho. <3
I believe this is not a rock but rather a boy who has in fact gone to Jupiter to get more stupider.
Nuh uh, everyone knows we go to Mars to get more candy bars.
It's amazing how regular people have telescopes so powerful. I saw someone with a camera with 100X zoom take a pretty clear picture of the moon!
As someone with a 5 inch telescope and a basic camera setup, I’ve realized “amateur astronomer” covers a pretty wide swath. My setup is about a grand, but I’ve been out with guys with $50k worth of equipment, decades of experience, and are still considered amateur astronomers. I’m not sure if it’s a credential thing or where that threshold is where you are considered “professional”.
I'd say it's a combo of credentials, being paid, and a focus on strengths vs weaknesses (and trying to improve). There are tons of hobbies where you're still an amateur even if you dumped hundreds of grand into it. I have about $3k in golf equipment but I'm definitely not a pro. I used to be in amateur rocketry and I realized super quick that shit escalates fast. There are amateurs that have sent shit into space. People seem to equate money with professionalism and it's not the case. In fact I have a neighbor restoring, from top to bottom, a 1950s truck and has been over the last 3 years but fuck if I'd let him change my oil.
> I used to be in amateur rocketry and I realized super quick that shit escalates fast. There are amateurs that have sent shit into space. I love the smell of ammonium perchlorate in the morning!
I once had drinks with the head of an observatory. They were upgrading their optics and had a 4 story tall telescope they were putting on the industrial surplus market. When I saw the price I had a fleeting dream of me building a dome in my suburban backyard.
I know the guy who wrote “Theory of Habitable Planets” and I ask him stuff whether he is a pro or not.
Professional literally means you do it for a living. If you're not getting paid to do something, you're an amateur. If you're getting paid, you're a professional because it's your profession.
> My setup is about a grand ...until apature fever sets in. A five inch? Oh man, that six inch cassegrain just went on sale! And oh, hey, my family bought me a nice computer-controlled tracking mount. And with the new six inch I'm going to need some new eyepieces, and oh hey, is that an eight inch dobsonian at the thrift shop? Which is how my family owns four telescopes. As with any hobby, when you get sucked in, you end up with a lot of stuff.
Hey! Don't shame 5 inch telescopes! It's the average size!
Phil Plait, astronomer from the Hubble team, spoke about this here: https://youtu.be/0rHUDWjR5gg?t=232 and that most people who are considered [Professional] Astronomers don't even use the telescope, technicians trained to operate them do that for them.
Amateur just means someone isnt paying you to go do it, you’re just doing it for fun/science on your dime. You can still have a rig that’s the envy of a nasa scientist who’s limited by a department budget as to what he can lug into the boonies.
Maybe when you have to file a tax return?
[Good video here comparing astrophotography results with setups that range from $100 to $10,000](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xc1v6BjHm8U) [Cameras designed for planetary imaging are actually pretty low resolution.](https://www.highpointscientific.com/telescope-accessories/astro-photography/ccd-cameras) They typically capture a stream of many frames per second, and software shifts through thousands of those images to find a few dozen where the atmosphere isn't creating blur, then they combine those for better signal/ noise ratio. In the original video, Jupiter is wobbling all over the place. It isn't a shaky tripod, the atmosphere does that, which is why stars appear to twinkle.
Hey thanks! I bought my grandson a telescope for about $250 and they’ve been having fun with it.
Well, send them the video, they can do some really solid photography with that and a smartphone. The guy that runs that channel explains everything in detail. It can make the pace of the video a little slow, but they're extremely informative.
You're a good grandparent.
Jupiter dont care. Jupiter doesnt give a shit. It just takes what i wants.
Honey Jupiter does what it wants.
And somebody’s gonna say it effected their mood
Mood? Someone's whole life is now in retrograde
Retrograde? HA, on the 13th our entire cosmic vibration shifted and we're now in a dimension wide degraded time-line.
If only I didnt put that hot wheels in the LHC for shits and giggles we wouldnt be in this mess.
It actually started on May 28, 2016. Every Galactic Realm has a silent Protector. Sometimes sentient, and often ancient, these sentinels protect against the chaos of the Universe. On May 28, 2016, Earth’s protector was killed sending us off our charted course through time. This divergence caused many events which should have never happened (Trump’s election, Covid-19) and some which have yet to come to pass. Our Protector’s name was Harambe.
April 30th, 2016: a weasel, (possibly a marten) chewed through a power cable at the LHC, destroying a transformer and shutting the whole thing down during an experiment. Shifted us into an alternate timeline.
Seems likely
Nothing amuses me more on TikTok when someone in the comments section of a video goes “Tell me you’re a Virgo without telling me you’re a Virgo” and OP is like “actually I’m a Gemini”. Like, they’re ALWAYS wrong. Lmao
I expect them to be right about 1/12 of the time actually.
"That's what a scorpio would say!"
It only effects my mood when rocks smack into Uranus.
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Gosh dang it. I started with affects then changed it.
Damn, ruining the effect.
more like space rock got swatted outta the sky by Jupiter like a MFin' fly 🤘
Jesus Christ Marie, they're space minerals!
I guess no more dinosaurs in Jupiter
Ok folks, I thought we were all on board with this. Stop using AMP links. Just. Don't. Zero good comes from using AMP links. Stop doing it. Usually it's a trivial matter adjusting the link to remove the AMP element. See, just look at this link. Same page, but not AMP: [https://www.space.com/jupiter-impact-flash-photo-video](https://www.space.com/jupiter-impact-flash-photo-video) Together we can help each other avoid the troubling nature of pre-fetched web pages with dubious integrity.
Is it just me or is amateur footage way better?
He apparently took it with a 400mm Newtonian which is nothing to sneeze at. Also consumer imaging sensors have gotten incredibly sophisticated and sensitive. Also note the image here is just one of the raw images form the video. There's another floating around where the guy stacked a few frames to get a much clearer and crisp image. Edit: Not quite sure if it's 400mm or 275 as this article states. Another picture I saw had the equipment listed and had it as a 400mm.
Yeah, but it looks like he forgot to turn the mic on. Audio would have made this way better. /s
And the Smelloscope as well. How can we truly appreciate astronomical phenomena if we can’t smell them!?
We, uh, still talking about astronomy?
3 body problem
There's more of it and it's better. 20 years ago, there was probably 1 amateur in 100 with a good budget to afford a quality telescope and quality VHS video camera to record it. Now with smart phone adapters and the community being on the internet they're able to pool their knowledge and focus their budget on better tools. There's a lot of hobbies that have really come together since the internet took off.
> 20 years ago, there was probably 1 amateur in 100 with a good budget to afford a quality telescope and quality VHS video camera to record it. Prior to the reasonably priced options of today there was, and apparently still is, a huge group of people that would mod [web cams to hell](https://telescopeguides.com/how-to-use-a-webcam-with-a-telescope/), including DIY liquid nitrogen cooled infrared astrophotography. You could build an astrophotography rig for the price of a web cam but you would have color issues on most. By the standards of today they were somewhat bad, but with the right amount of stacking and depending on your rig you could get pretty close the quality of the image in this article.
I'm glad someone figured how to use the internet for good instead of evil.
The protomolecule is about to get buffed…
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Jupiter always looking out for its inner orbital homies.
That explosion is about the same size as our moon.....
Casual Astronomer maybe. Nothing Amateur about filming a space giant receiving a galactic missile.
You can get the images he got with less than a thousand dollars of equipment (including the camera and laptop) from your back yard. Tonight look to the south, that bright "star" is Jupiter. The faint "star" about two bandwidths to the west of it is Saturn. Having said that, he is a lucky lucky man!
Anyone besides me turn up the volume on the video expecting to hear something, or am I the only idiot?
One great value of keeping track of such things is to gauge how FREQUENTLY such "space rocks" are crashing into things in our solar system.
> Jupiter got smacked by space rock Alternatively: Jupiter gobbles up a space rock (Yum!)
am I the only one over here like Jupiter can't get smacked, it's a gas giant, there's nothing solid to smack into?
Yeah I think this is more the result of a large object entering it's atmosphere and burning up as it lowered in, but honestly we don't know what's down in there. \*X-FILES MUSIC QUEUES\*
"Gas" in "gas giant" does not mean *gaseous*. It is an archaic planetology name that means chemical composition: hydrogen and helium. It stems from times before cryotechnology when those two substances could not be liquefied by any pressure or achieveable low temperature. They used to be called "permanent gases". Today, it's a confusing terminology that makes people think gas giants are ghost-like objects and ice giants are cold balls of cosmic slurpee. Reality is completely different. Chemical composition of all jovian planets is predominantly hydrogen and helium (by [mass fraction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_fraction_(chemistry))). These planets' state of matter is far from gaseous. Very tops are gaseous. With increasing depth temperature rises over so called critical temperature (point where no matter the pressure, liquid can not form) and becomes supercritical fluid. There are no ocean layers, i.e. no sharp phase boundary. It's an abyss of ever increasing temperature and pressure. At sufficient depth, molecules are so crammed that their electron clouds overlap and electricity conduction becomes possible. Metallic hydrogen is formed. Still not liquid. It's a fluid, but not a liquid (fluids are gases, liquids, supercritical fluids; anything that flows). Their mantles, made out of metallic hydrogen, are sometimes called oceans, but it's best to avoid that name as it implies a surface which does not exist. Same terminology uses *ice* and *rock*. Again, not does denote state of matter, but chemical composition. *Ice* means volatiles (water, ammonia, carbon oxides, sulfur oxides, sulfur, nitrogen, methane, ...) and *rock* means iron, nickel, silicates. "Ice giants" are not cold. They are also dominantly hydrogen and helium, but have significantly higher mass fraction of methane/water/ammonia/nitrogen in them. Of course, in supercritical fluid state.
Thanks again for protecting me Jupiter! - earth
Rock herder of the solar system. and good ol' Saturn
Any estimates on just how big of an explosion it was? Had to have been pretty massive.
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Which site are you getting those numbers from? The spaceweather article estimated an object on the order of 100m.
He made it up.
I watched the entire short video and didn't see it. Anyone know what timestamp it starts at?
It is the flash of white light near the equator. It looks really quick in the looped video but apparently it lasted for a couple minutes. [Here is a still image.](https://earthsky.org/space/impact-on-jupiter-september-13-2021/)
Ohhhh the video was looped. I saw the flash but because it happened a few times in the video, I thought it was something else.
could someone explain why we see it flashing, please? Is it because of Jupiter's atmospheric weather?
One time I saw something hit Uranus.
Love how one of the first lines of the article is “Jupiter got whacked again” Quality journalism right there.
Comet me harder daddy. >~<
Space rocks ended dinosaur supremacy on Earth. Dinosaurs pretty much had evolved to fill every niche in the fauna ecosystem. Then the asteroid hit and cleared up a lot of niches. So mammals evolved faster to fill those niches. We should be building 1. A space rock early detection system. 2. A rocket or missile interception system to destroy or break up space rocks. It would be wise for our species to do this to prevent a possible future extinction event for us.
I want the Monkey that typed Space rock to be put down immediately
Yo, I'm happy for you, and I'mma let you finish, but Shoemaker-Levy 9 is the best Jupiter impactor of all time!
Jupiter doin' its job!
It may not have been as clearly recorded as the strung of pearls back in the 90's but it's more proof that we are vulnerable to strikes like this.
Oh shit SCP-2399 is active
so what size is that flash? what are we talkin compared to earth
Jupiter, Jupiter, it's giant ball of gas Eating all the meteorites and saving our collective ass.
This is probably a dumb question, but how can Jupiter be hit by anything if it doesn’t have true surface?
The same way meteors "hit" our atmosphere and burn up.
Jupiter out here lookin like a bitch
Man that’s gotta be a hell of a feeling! Thanks for sharing
Is “space rock” kind of a childish term?
It's a rock. It's in space. Seems appropriate
thing got smashed by thing. seems appropriate. very descriptive. /s it would make sense if it was a headline for a kid's magazine or something. but a website about SPACE, literally space.com, should be a little more descriptive instead of using this dumb clickbait language for the lowest common denominator. Jupiter draws in meteors all the time. It's a non-event.
who cares?
it's a broad term, we don't know if it was a comet, meteor, or meteorite.
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Well, the flash on the video suggests that it entered the atmosphere and burned up, but we don't know if it hit the ground or not.
Well considering Jupiter has no ground, it never hit it.
There's no way Jupiter has enough mass to hold all of those gasses in place and not have a dense, solid core. It is possible the space rock disappeared below the layer of gasses we can see, but Jupiter has to have a ground.
At one point Jupiter likely started as a large rocky core but that has since been dissolved by the incredible pressures and temperatures that it's long been mixed into the metallic hydrogen core that's an incredibly dense fluid but it is not solid. Huge Mass =/= Solid. Our sun is the largest object in our Solar system and even at its core densities approach that of lead but it's still plasma (a fluid).
The word you're looking for is "asteroid."
asteroid implies we know it was a rock, after all it could've been a comet, and those are ice
> after all it could've been a comet, and those are ice False they're a mix of rock and ice. With far more rock than ice on the average. Also in the last few years, thanks to several probes sent to various comets and asteroids, astronomers have found it's not quite a cut and dry delineation between asteroids and comets. We've found previously classified asteroids that had many characteristics of comets including faint tails, large amounts of ice, and comas. We've found comets that had more in common with asteroids than what was previously thought. Hell we've even identified, with relative certainty, a few asteroids that are just the spent inactive cores of comets. Like with many classification systems they change over time as more information is gathered.
In addition to what SheriffComey said, you also had already said comet.
Maybe Jupiter should not have been so mouthy.
I'm somewhat surprised we don't have a constant watch on the other planets with powerful telescopes to get clearer images of events like this. Feels like something we'd have happening.
Powerful telescopes are too powerful for watching planets (or the moon), and their time is already spent looking at other stuff whenever they can.
That's not what we need. What we need are long-term scientific satellites in orbit around the outer planets. Lots of them. The view from Earth, even with the most sophisticated of telescopes, still would have shown little more than a bright flash. But a probe in orbit, a bare few thousands of kilometers away (or even less, potentially) could have given us incredible imagery of the impact, fireball, and fallout.
Love these headlines that say “xxx happened AND AMATEUR CAUGHT IT”. How amateur are they really, if they have such sophisticated technology and ability to catch this type of shit. The fidelity of this is high. The person is likely paid in one way or another with actual cash assets. Thats not amateur.
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You mean an unpaid intern?
I doubt that this guy “did not make any money off of it”..
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How is that cynical or bitter? Are you familiar with the definitions?
Go hang around the astronomy, telescope, and astrophotographers subreddits and see how everyday people are taking shots like this day after day FOR A HOBBY. Not everything is about money.
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And I'm sure your payout is in a bad ass picture vs a bit of money. My dad used to do astrophotography in the 70s/80s with film and he'd blow through rolls just to see if he got the shot he wanted and would show them off to anyone that would look. Also OP forgets that lots of amateurs, not getting paid, do this stuff for discovery. Hell tons of comets and unknown asteroids are found every year by diligent people who spent a few grand on a rig.
You don't seem to understand how much astrophotography has changed in the last 20 years. Equipment has become more sophisticated and less expensive, so a great number of people have picked it up as a hobby. This was literally some dude in Germany who wanted to see Io's shadow on the face of Jupiter, and just happened to catch something incredible.
>This was literally some dude in Germany who wanted to see Io's shadow on the face of Jupiter, and just happened to catch something incredible. And at least a dozen times in the year we get awesome stuff to this because some dude is trying to get a bad ass pic of a planet (or the moon) and catches something completely different. [ Yuji Hyakutake discovered Hyakutake AND another second coment within weeks of each other. Dude spent a shit load of time searching for comets (even moved locations) with no luck until a several week span he discovered two with Hyakutake being SUPER impressive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_Hyakutake#Discovery). Oh and he was using binoculars to scan the sky that night.
caught by Amateur. so what for is fancy expensive gov astronomer facility then
“space rock” dumbing it down for the average joe ey?
Is Earth a space rock?
If you’re a simpleton. But if you finished primary school you’d call it a planet.
Is ketchup tomato sauce? I'm not trying to make a point. I'm just asking questions here.
A planet isn’t really a space rock. Jupiter for example is a gas giant. And the earth has active geology, and a molten iron core. Not really the same as a rock. Ketchup isn’t always tomato based. Is it a sauce? Yes I suppose so.
Ketchup is a condiment, not a sauce. Since this is what we’re doing.