Eldritch Magic on Jupiter?

What would Lovecraft think? Would this have wnet in one of his stories as an eldritch machination of the Old Ones?



July 20, 2009

Scientists have found evidence that another object has bombarded Jupiter, exactly 15 years after the first impacts by the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9.

Following up on a tip by an amateur astronomer, Anthony Wesley of Australia, that a new dark "scar" had suddenly appeared on Jupiter, this morning between 3 and 9 a.m. PDT (6 a.m. and noon EDT) scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., using NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility at the summit of Mauna Kea, Hawaii, gathered evidence indicating an impact.

New infrared images show the likely impact point was near the south polar region, with a visibly dark "scar" and bright upwelling particles in the upper atmosphere detected in near-infrared wavelengths, and a warming of the upper troposphere with possible extra emission from ammonia gas detected at mid-infrared wavelengths.

"We were extremely lucky to be seeing Jupiter at exactly the right time, the right hour, the right side of Jupiter to witness the event. We couldn't have planned it better," said Glenn Orton, a scientist at JPL.

Orton and his team of astronomers kicked into gear early in the morning and haven't stopped tracking the planet. They are downloading data now and are working to get additional observing time on this and other telescopes.

This image was taken at 1.65 microns, a wavelength sensitive to sunlight reflected from high in Jupiter's atmosphere, and it shows both the bright center of the scar (bottom left) and the debris to its northwest (upper left).

"It could be the impact of a comet, but we don't know for sure yet," said Orton. "It's been a whirlwind of a day, and this on the anniversary of the Shoemaker-Levy 9 and Apollo anniversaries is amazing."

Shoemaker-Levy 9 was a comet that had been seen to break into many pieces before the pieces hit Jupiter in 1994.

Leigh Fletcher, a NASA postdoctoral fellow at JPL who worked with Orton during these latest observations said, "Given the rarity of these events, it's extremely exciting to be involved in these observations. These are the most exciting observations I've seen in my five years of observing the outer planets!"

The observations were made possible in large measure by the extraordinary efforts of the Infrared Telescope Facility staff, including telescope operator William Golisch, who adroitly moved three instruments in and out of the field during the short time the scar was visible on the planet, providing the wide wavelength coverage.



Link

Coment Lulin and Lovecraft

“Last night I had an interesting view of Peltier’s comet through the 12" telescope of Ladd Observatory (of Brown U) a mile north of here. I used to haunt this observatory 30 years ago—the director and his two assistants (all dead now—save one asst. now at Wesleyan U. in Middletown, Conn.) being infinitely tolerant of a pompous juvenile ass with grandiose astronomical ambitions! The present object showed a small disc with hazy, fan-like tail. I could have seen it through my own small telescope were the northern sky less cut off from the neighbourhood of 66. The first comet I ever observed was Borelli’s—in Aug. 1903. I saw Halley’s in 1910—but missed the bright one earlier in that year by being flat in bed with a hellish case of measles!” (to Robert H. Barlow, 23 July 1936)

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Over the next three nights (about 25 February 2009), skywatchers can expect their best views yet of Comet Lulin, an odd, greenish backward-flying comet that's "zipping by Earth this month, as it takes its only trip toward the sun from the farthest edges of the solar system."

The Chicago Tribune reports that Comet Lulin makes its closest approach to Earth — some 38 million miles away — on Tuesday, Feb. 24.

To the naked eye, the comet looks like a fuzzy patch of hazy light against the night sky, according to the Christian Science Monitor.

What's additionally interesting about this comet is the story behind it. The Tribune article says that Lulin was discovered by a Chinese teenager two years ago.

Also remarkable is the fact that, while all the planets and most of the other objects in the solar system circle the sun counterclockwise, Lulin circles clockwise, the paper quotes NASA astronomer Stephen Edberg as saying. "It's essentially going backwards through the solar system," he said.

To HPLblog fans ... an experiment

OK, Chrispy is experimenting with some technology here. If all goes well, I should be able to embed a video of the comet (see blog post below).

16 November 1906: The Wanderers Of Our System

This comet would have gotten HPL very excited ...

Comet McNaught, discovered last year by Australian astronomer R.H. McNaught, was visible throughout the Northern Hemisphere until Friday, when it came within 16 million miles of the sun and became obscured by the sun's glare.

^Oconomowoc, Wisconsin^

About 100 years ago, young Howard (age 16) wrote in his column for the Pawtuxet Valley Gleaner *, "Comets, those strange astronomical nonentities, are members of the solar system that revolve in very elongated and uneven orbits. ... While most comets are visible only in a telescope, a few are very bright. ... These celestial wanderers were formerly regarded as precursors of calamity, but modern progress has destroyed such gross superstition, and comets are now welcomed rather than dreaded."

* pp. 38,39 of Collected Essays, Volume 3: Science, ed. S. T. Joshi, Hippocampus Press, NY, 2005