Flash on Jupiter

[The Admiral]

Well, I don't know. The whole event seems to emerge from the surface and ultimately subside back into it. I'm also intrigued by the double filament in my 3rd pic, looking very much like a filament on the sun arching back to the surface. It then looks as though the peak of the arch gets distorted and brightens. This may be wild imagination of course, and I'm no expert, just an intrigued watcher from the sidelines.

Ian

[Stu]

Comment on CN too

http://www.cloudynights.com/topic/531865-possible-asteroid-impact-on-jupiter-confirmation-needed/

[Mr Spock]

It does look like an impact. It would need confirmation from another source though to be sure.

[jambouk]

The moon Amalthea seems to be in a very similar position at the proposed timing of the event (00:18 UTC on 17.03.2016). I wonder if this would account for the light appearing to emerge from the planet as the moon emerges from in front of the planet to its side.

Screen shot from Stellarium:

[The Admiral]

Hmm, quite persuasive. But I wonder if it's a fraction too far South (North?). But I'd best leave it to those who know far better than me!

Ian

[JB80]

The timing and location is pretty close to be coincidental I think.

[laudropb]

Very interesting. I have checked all the sources I know and can find no other report.

[neil phillips]

Even though the footage is not great, scar or no scar, ive seen pixel artifacts, and this looks nothing like that. it looks like a imapact, has all the hall marks. Of course I could be wrong. But I don't think its a moon or a artefact. compare to when it happened last time and was recorded by Chris go. And Anthony Wesley. Similar scenario.

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2010/11jun_missingdebris/

[neil phillips]

That moon bothers me though ?  on CN it said the guy updated the time, it might not have been correct ? weird coincidence with that moon there. I don't like coincidence.

Never seen a moon behave like that before. Unless the footage was really bad perhaps. Confusing. I still say it looks like a impact

[jambouk]

I want it to be an impact as that would make it an amazing thing to capture, but because of the "coincidental" position of the moon and the fact the object appears to come into focus rather than fade away, I now reluctantly put my money on a moon-related Artifact. We need to ensure we get some video footage of Jupiter when one of the smaller moons completes a transit to see if we can reproduce the effect or not. I've emailed Damian to have a look at this thread and his data so it will be interesting to hear what he thinks.

James

[neil phillips]

Looking at Gerrys  time correction. The Moon wouldn't be in that position

[The Admiral]

But my viewing of it seems to indicate that the so called flash does rapidly fade away, with the 'protruberance' from the limb sinking back. Would one normally expect to see that moon? As a wild guess, is it possible for the upper atmosphere of Jupiter to momentarily 'lens' the moon, if it was indeed there?

Mind you, the 'stucture' leading up to the flash is not so easy to explain, though I guess optical aberrations abound.

Ian

[Luis Campos]

There are two possible events on Jupiter that can cause such a flash:

-Impact

-Lighthning ( a huge one) but this would hardly be visible on the sun lit side, it would take an off the scale lightning to do so!

So, I vote for an impact, a small body tough, a small asteroid wouldn't leave visible debris as it would explode on the upper layers.

The "effect" we see in the video are just caused by the atmosphere, the seeing was quite bad and distorted the "flash".

Cheers,

 

 

[jambouk]

Peachy seems interested which would favour an impact I'd have thought:

"Hi James,

 

I've posted a couple of alerts - thanks for sending this to me!

 

I didnt notice anything in my run of data during the past 10days. Small impacts like this are unlikely to leave scars (none of the other flash events did.) Remarkable another one has been found...."

[jambouk]

Damian has put it on his facebook page and it looks like one of his followers captured it too!

[JB80]

Yeah I saw that too so it looks to be a flash event, being on the limb such as it is and especially with John's second screen grab you can see it almost side on.
That is probably useful for science, it still looks huge.

[jsmoraes]

I did some proccessing with the frames. 

What I think to be  important is the round shape of the body.

The image number 2 show that round shape in the center of the "eject".

Number 3 and 4 show two round shape inside. As the body was in fragmentation.

 

 

 

 

 

And my animation of the event:

[jambouk]

Fascinating - what conclusions do you draw from these images?

[jsmoraes]

Quote

The moon Amalthea seems to be in a very similar position at the proposed timing of the event (00:18 UTC on 17.03.2016).

Good observation! Maybe ... but why the moon disappear in frames before and after ? Some kind of "atmospheric lens" ? 

Nevertheless, great video !

[Twiggles]

Another imager also caught it (as mentioned above) and placed the youtube link on damian peach's facebook post:

 

 

[Mr Spock]

Now there are two independant videos of the same event, it does look like we have an impact.

[JB80]

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2016/03/29/jupiter_hit_by_asteroid_or_comet_in_march_2016.html

 

A nice article by Phil Plait.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

I would definitely say impact event. Some of the footage shows clear diffraction rings around the object, so it could not possibly be a cosmic ray event in the CCD or CMOS chip (which would not last multiple frames anyway, in my experience). Amalthea is WAY too faint to show up in this footage, even if it were in the right position. The distortion and splitting up or elongation of the bulge may in part be due to atmospherics, but the two different videos are a bit too similar for me to accept that atmospherics are purely to blame. I would wager it is the plume developing and ultimately falling back. We would never see the object that hit Jupiter split up, because it is far too small.

 

Fascinating event

 

[Hyperion76]

http://astronomynow.com/2016/03/30/amateur-astronomers-video-impact-on-jupiter/

More on it here interesting......

[JeremyS]

There is coverage of this fireball on Jupiter on the BAA web site here: https://britastro.org/node/7282

Jeremy