Jupiter takes a hit

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Anyone interested in planetary astronomy (as I am) may be interested to know that observers have found a ''black eye'' on the cloud belts of the planet Jupiter, caused by an impact by either a small comet or asteroid. This of course comes only a few years after the Shoemaker-Levy IX Comet slammed into the Jovian atmosphere.

[RF]

As an aside to the original post, one of the theories of how the Moon formed involved a violent collision between Earth and another planet, the latter being completely vapourised by the friction of impact. Astronomers have only been able to hypothesise what such a collision was like - now the Spitzer Space Telescope has found the aftermath of a collision between two small planets, with the combined mass of Mars, and what it shows is brutal. This is now demonstrated on a NASA video now uploaded on to You Tube.

See ''NASA Animation of a GIANT impact''.