An amateur astronomer has captured an impressive record of a flash in Jupiter's atmosphere. What Japanese Tadao Ohsugi observed at that moment was so shocking and rare that he decided to discover what this intriguing event was in the Solar System.
After registering, he contacted researcher and professor Ko Arimatsu, from Kyoto University, in Japan. This researcher, responsible for the observation program of the Solar system With backyard equipment, he investigated the information and realized that other people also witnessed that impressive event on Jupiter on August 28th.
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In the recorded image, it is possible to see the exact moment in which the planet's atmosphere on the luminous impact occurs.
Jupiter is a planet of significant size, but even so, it is not possible to easily verify such impacts on its atmosphere.
“Direct observation of these bodies is virtually impossible, even with advanced telescopes,” said Arimatsu to The New York Times, after being surprised by the flash seen, he said that Tadao Ohsugi observed something single.
Due to the magnitude of the event, the researchers explained that the flash was caused by the effect of asteroids or comets that came from the limits of the Solar System.
For Leigh Fletcher, professor at the Scientific Planetarium at the University of Leicester, this observation is “a glimpse of the violent processes that occurred in the early days of our Solar System”.
For all these reasons, the phenomenon offered new data for studies on the understanding of the universe and the stars.
(Image: Tadao Ohsugi/Reproduction)
Rare Jupiter Record
Before 2023, events of this magnitude were rarely recorded. In this decade, the last one was in 2021. In 1994, a comet hit the planet Jupiter with such intensity that the impact left a visible debris field.
Due to this rarity, the recent flash on Jupiter fascinated scientists and amateur astronomers who are dedicated to observing the planets of the Solar System.
Typically, amateur observers use a technique called lucky imaging, with which part of the sky is precisely filmed. According to the data, 8 out of 9 flashes on Jupiter were recorded by amateurs.
For Fletcher, such footage becomes a “treasure of data” that will later be analyzed by scientists and can bring new understandings about our system.
This observation of Jupiter highlights the continued importance of space exploration and research science to understand our place in the universe and how the Solar System formed over billions of years.