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

Series

This page can be found in the following series:

Datasets used

  • Shoemaker-Levy 9 Comet Fragment Ephemerides

    ID: 644
    Type: Ephemeris Dates used: 1994/06/17 to 1994/08/01
    See all pages that use this dataset

  • Cassini/Jupiter imagery [Cassini: Imaging Science Subsystem]

    ID: 645
    Type: Mosaic Sensor: Imaging Science Subsystem Collected by: Cassini Imagery/Central Laboratory for OPerations Dates used: 2009

    Cassini/Jupiter imagery

    This dataset can be found at: http://ciclops.org/

    See all pages that use this dataset

Note: While we identify the data sets used on this page, we do not store any further details, nor the data sets themselves on our site.

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.