The astronomer took a photo of an unknown object colliding with Jupiter. Later, a video was created demonstrating this event.
Amateur astronomer Gerrit Kernbauer captured a collision of an object with a gas giant. The pictures were taken on March 17, 2016: a 20-centimeter telescope came to the aid of the astronomer. According to experts, the collision gave rise to a colossal release of energy, which is equal to 12.5 million tons of TNT.
The main question can be formulated as follows: what was this object after all? Experts believe that it was an ordinary comet. The fifth planet from the Sun undergoes such "blows of fate" about once a year. In 1994, the most famous event of this kind happened: then comet D / 1993 F2 (Shoemaker-Levy) collided with Jupiter. It is believed that before the collision, it could have been in the orbit of the gas giant for 20 years. However, there is no serious evidence of this yet.
Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system. Its mass is 1.89861027 kg. The gas giant has 67 satellites, including Io, Europa, Ganymede.
Ilya Vedmedenko