Word: comets
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...First a Spanish observatory announced that it had spotted a plume of gas billowing up from the edge of Jupiter. Then a group of observers in Chile confirmed the sighting, and so did another team based at the South Pole. But although the first of the 21 fragments of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 hit the giant planet shortly after 4 p.m. Eastern time, astronomers at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, had to wait for images to be beamed down from the orbiting Hubble telescope. Finally, at about 8, the first pictures came up on the video screen...
Fragment Q1 of the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet hurtled into Jupiter late this afternoon, and two more pieces are expected to bombard the same spot on the planet shortly. The upcoming shower follows two smaller impacts earlier today. Q1, R and S are only slightly smaller than the largest fragment, G, which hit Monday and caused the highly visible "black eye" of Jupiter...
Jupiter, already suffering a "black eye," was battered again by the splintered Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet. The eighth fragment, K, produced another huge fireball that lifted from the planet and grew to three times the size of Earth. Calculations of yesterday's damage from Fragments G and H are still being made. But astronomers are predicting that the huge hole called a black eye, which was caused by G, may become an even more distinguishing feature than Jupiter's Great Red Spot...
Astronomers are used to finding all kinds of wild things in outer space -- black holes, colliding galaxies, stars spinning hundreds of times a second, even a 21-piece comet now on its way to smashing into Jupiter. Still, the giant glowing hoops that showed up in a Hubble Space Telescope picture released last week prompted veteran sky watchers to chatter like awestruck kids. "It's bizarre," said Christopher Burrows of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland. "It's the neatest thing I've ever seen...
Twenty-one mountain-size comet fragments are speeding toward the giant planet. Their arrival in July could trigger the most spectacular celestial encounter ever seen in the solar system...