Shoemaker-Levy 9 Hitting Jupiter with Orbit Trails

  • Released Monday, September 21, 2009
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This visualziation shows the major fragments of comet Showmaker-Levy 9 colliding with Jupiter. The orbits are driven using ephemeris data. The impacts occurred over a series of about six Earth days which is why Jupiter (which rotates about once every Earth 10 hours) appears to be rotating so fast in this visualization; time is is depicted at about 7 hours per second of animation.

The comet fragments shown are: "a", "b", "c", "d", "e", "f", "g", "h", "k", "l", "n", "p", "p", "q", "q", "r", "s", "t", "u", "v", and "w". Several letters were skipped (due to lack of ephemeris) and 2 letters "p" and "q" appear twice; these are also known as "p1", "p2", "q1", and "q2".

This visualization was created in support of the Science On a Sphere film called "LARGEST" which is about Jupiter. The visualziation was choreographed to fit into "LARGEST" as a layer that is intended to be composited with other layers including a match-rendered background star field. Three copies of this shot are arranged in order to facilitate a seamless inset on the Science On a Sphere composited frames.

Shoemaker-Levy 9 fragments collide with Jupiter — train of fragments view

Shoemaker-Levy 9 fragments collide with Jupiter — impact view

Star field background match rendered for wrapping to the Science On a Sphere

Fragment "a" about to impact Jupiter

Fragment "a" about to impact Jupiter

Fragment "k" impacts Jupiter

Fragment "k" impacts Jupiter

Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio

This page was originally published on Monday, September 21, 2009.
This page was last updated on Wednesday, May 3, 2023 at 1:54 PM EDT.

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