silly question on Jupiter

[proflight2000]

Sorry to bung this on you all, but something my son saw the other day lent him to ask me a question which I cant answer, just wondering if anyone can place any light on this. On the hubble 15 year DVD it shows pictures of some pretty heavy astroid hits to the planet Jupiter, these pictures showed as impacts. Now the question "This giant planet has no solid surface. Under its atmosphere is a large liquid ocean of hydrogen " seeing as Jupiter has no solid surface, why are impacts shown.

Many thanks

[barkis]

PF, there was a cometary impact on Jupiter not too long ago, in fact the planet was struck by many fragments of the Comet Shoemaker Levy 9

That particular comet was torn apart on it's previous encounter with jupiter, and It was soon established that the fragments, some of appreciable size, would impact jupiter, which it did of course. This event was witnessedlive by many observatories including Hubble. Also many amateur observers saw the results of the impacts, which left huge scars on the planet for weeks and months after.

At the speed these impacts took place, they caused severe disruption to the planets atmosphere, and these are what was visible to observers.

Other people here may elaborate more on this, but generally that is what happened.

Ron.

[Cloudwatcher]

Can't elaborate on what Ron says which is wholly correct.

You could try using the analogy of throwing pebbles into a pond. The ripple effect produced would illustrated the result of a solid impacting a non-solid in much the same way as comet fragments striking the atmosphere of Jupiter. Very,very small scale of course and the 'scars' don't last as long but fun anyway. Try and avoid the ducks!

CW

[Greg]

Ron has pretty much answered a very intelligent question...

The only thing I would add would be..that on the surface of Jupiter, the layer of gas consists mainly of gaseous hydrogen and helium. As we go deeper into the planet, the tremendous pressure causes the gasses to compress into liquid.

A good analogy would be to imagine Jupiter as a big ball of liquid, throw a pebble into it and you get impact ripples, just like throwing a stone into a pond..

HTH..

Greg

[Naz]

Plus also the debris from the comet all churned up with the Jovian atmosphere.

If I remember right, it happened in 1993?

naz

[Astroman]

The ripple analogies are sound, but there's more to it. The density of Jupiter's atmosphere causes different layers of different compundss to show different colors. For example, the GRS is a different color than its surroundings due to its composition, and these compounds being lifted from far below the "surface" that we see. Same for the festoons and other features you see in detailed images.

When S/L9 slammed into the planet in July of 1994, it parted the outer cloud layer, as in the ripples analogy, and this in turn revealed the layers below, made dark by their temperature and the pressure of layers above.

Great question, and great answers, too!

[proflight2000]

Thanks all, thats become a little clearer now especially the interuption of the darker bottom layers which answers the question as to why the shoemaker made dark indentations which were shown on the hubble dvd.