Stellary Starry Universe

Jupiter and Earth are converging for their closest encounter in more than a decade. Only the Moon itself is outshining the giant planet in the midnight sky, and the view through a telescope is dynamite.

Amateur astronomers using backyard telescopes were the first to detect two small objects that burned up in Jupiter’s atmosphere on June 3 and Aug. 20.

In a paper published today in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, a group of professional and amateur astronomers announced that Jupiter is getting hit surprisingly often by small asteroids, lighting up the giant planet's atmosphere with frequent fireballs.

On June 3rd, amateur astronomers were startled by a bright flash of light on Jupiter. It appeared to be an impact event–a comet or asteroid hitting the planet's cloudtops.

Curiously, though, the "impact" has left no obvious debris. Was it really an impact–or something else? Today's story from Science@NASA discusses the possibilities.

In a surprising development that has transformed the appearance of the solar system's largest planet, one of Jupiter's two main cloud belts has completely disappeared.