A Blemish, By Jove!
Posted at 5:20 AM on July 22, 2009
by Dale Connelly
(15 Comments)
You have to be happy for Anthony Wesley of Murrumbatema, Australia.
A couple of nights ago he spotted something on the planet Jupiter that might otherwise have gone unnoticed.
He told The Guardian newspaper he spends "about 20 hours a week" on his hobby. I can only assume his interest in astronomy is rewarding for its own sake. Still, if you spend that much of your free time photographing planets and stars, you must hope that at some unexpected moment you will see something important before anyone else on earth sees it. That is apparently what happened the other night when Mr. Wesley was looking at Jupiter from his backyard. Here's what he wrote about it:
The scope in use was my new 14.5" newtonian, in use now for a few weeks and so far returning excellent images.I was pleasantly surprised to find reasonable imaging conditions and so I decided to continue recording data until maybe 1am local time. By about midnight (12:10 am) the seeing had deteriorated and I was ready to quit. Indeed I had hovered the mouse over the exit button on my capture application and then changed my mind and decided instead to simply take a break for 30 minutes and then check back to see if the conditions had improved. It was a very near thing
.
Mr Wesley told The Guardian that after he "hovered the mouse over the exit button" he decided to go inside to watch sports on TV.
"I ... seriously thought about packing up and going back to the house to watch the golf and the cricket. In the end I decided to just take a break and I went back to the house to watch Tom Watson almost make history."
Instead, it was Mr. Wesley who made history. When he checked back he saw an unusual black spot near the planet's south pole (near the top of this photo he took). It doesn't look like much to us because Jupiter is so large and so very far away, but the spot is about the size of our Pacific Ocean. It grew later to be as big as earth itself - still just a blot on the Jovian cloud cover. But If you looked at Jupiter every night, it' s a change you would definitely notice.
Space scientists seem to agree this spot is evidence that something rather significant, a comet or an asteroid, crashed into the largest planet in our solar system - a planet that "has our back" so to speak. Mr. Wesley described it this way to the Sydney Morning Herald:
"If anything like that had hit the Earth it would have been curtains for us, so we can feel very happy that Jupiter is doing its vacuum-cleaner job and hoovering up all these large pieces before they come for us."
Thanks, Jupiter!
I find it amazing that a cataclysmic event in our solar system registers as a dark spot rotating into view in the camera lens of a guy who was puttering around in his back yard -a guy who thought the most remarkable thing he would see that day was another guy missing a putt.
Have you ever felt that you were among the first to witness something significant?
Comments (15)
Hi Heartlanders! This is fitting as I just watched a movie about a meteor crashing into the earth. I am glad that other planets out there are indeed protecting us. As for me, I cannot remember being one of the first to see anything significant. As a teenager, I used to climb up on the roof of our house and stare at the stars for hours. Saw a couple of shooting stars, but that is about it.
While it's not a Jovian-sized observation I am in the midst of being the first person to observe a pattern at work. Our lab tests the blod of infants. I began to notice an unusual result. Most of the babies with this result had something seriosly wrong and many of them died, but they didn't have the problem we were testing for.
It was scary to be the only one seeing this pattern. Being a scientist I first concluded that the results were simply a coincidence. When the pattern continued, my observation became a burden. I knew I needed more cases to prove the point, but hated to wish the outcome on any babies.
When I had a series that seemed beyond coincidence, I shared the data with some folks. There is now an official study underway and a bunch of us believe that this test may be used in the future to help save babies' lives.
I hope Jupiter keeps hoovering up stray stuff-at least until I can see if my hypothesis is true.
At the scale of meteors hitting Jupiter? Nope - nothing at that level of significance. I've seen more at the micro level that a lot of people get to see: my kid's first steps, her first dance recital, the daily burgeoning of her creativity (latest project: a "nature house" in the front yard made from tree branches, sticks, leaves, rubber bands...). Planets and comets? Nope. Just daily life.
Does watching/hearing Radio Heartland come into existence count?
Thanks for these stories, Anna, Beth-Ann and Mike.
Beth-Ann, that's an amazing thing you're doing. It could turn out to be world-changing for a lot of people, bigger even than noticing a blot on Jupiter! Remarkable.
As a kid I was playing with friends around the neighbor's garage near a woodsy area and was the first to look the window to notice that a number of the trees were on fire. There is a moment at the beginning of such an experience where you have to blink - am I really seeing what I think I'm seeing? Not unlike what you went through, Beth-Ann, when you first noticed that pattern. Pointing out that something bad is going on might make you feel like you're complicit in the mayhem somehow, but at least in the case of this medical mystery, a lot of good things could come out of it.
In my case, a chunk of the forest burned down.
But the garage was saved! I'll take some of the credit for that.
When I was a student I described some new species of microscopic soil living round worms. This was not too hard to do becasuse the soil is filled with undescribed species of round worms.
More unusual was finding that one of these worms was parasitized by another round worm. Others had seen round worms with round worm parasites, but not very many people had seen it.
You could play Dean McGraw's tune, Jupiter, to fit with the subject of the blog today.
When I was a kid, gazing out my bedroom window one evening, I saw a huge firery explosion. It seemed a long time passed before we heard the "KABOOM" (light traveling faster of course). I was the only one in house that saw the flash when the tank at the fuel farm on W. 7th in Saint Paul blew up.
On a much smaller scale I love being in a crowd (like state fair or Grand Old Day) and seeing somebody do something odd or sneaky or funny and nobody else notices.
Rock on Beth-Ann!
Woops! I was thinking of Dean Mcgraw's song, Saturn. I guess Dean Mcgraw doesn't have a tune named Juptter. Sorry, Dale.
while i like to think i am observant, i don't have the patience to, for example, look thru a telescope for 20 hours/week. i had a cool astronomy prof. at the U (i bet many of you did) where i learned the term "zitsfleisch" - meaning patience - which is what astronomers certainly need. Mothers need it too, Anna. unlike Mike, i've never been able to do anything for "hours." and i don't think i've been the first to see something no one else has ever seen. i admire folks like Beth-Ann who are patient, careful observers. thanks.
my attention span matches my focus of attention - my goats. we are in sinc - but sometimes i think even they are more patient than i am. :-)
Hi all,
When I was younger, I was in an astronomy club that was into observing grazing occultations of the moon -- when a mountain on the moon passes in front of a star. We timed it and occasionally got reasonably scientific results, good enough to send in to the official people. Not overwhelming significant but somewhat on topic! Needless to say, I'm envious of Mr. Wesley's good luck -- and great photo.
There's always Holst's The Planets ... even if we can only get a snippet.
Heartlanders-
Thanks for your encouragement. I'm really touched.
Beth-Ann
Ok, the first thing I thought of when I saw the headline for today's topic was, "A person of British/Flemish descent?"
My wife told me about this story when it hit the wire a couple of days ago. At first, I said that it was a new life form. '2010' anyone? Then she read to me that it was an impact. We both said 'thanks' to Jupiter for taking another knock on the chin for us.
Firsts or discoveries. ...hm...have to think on that one...
Thank you, Dale and Mike, for playing the song, Hurtling Toward the Groove, by the Orange Mighty Trio. This song refers to trips made by Zack Kline, the fiddler in the trio, who is my son-in-law. We live in Clarks Grove and Zack some times says he is coming to the Groove when he comes to visit us.
in keeping with my recent "day late and a dollar short" status, i've got to say something about Supertramp!
i LOVE that band, and highly recommend, Dale, the album "Crisis? What Crisis?" as their best--and i'll send you a copy if you want...let me know!
howdy to all my heartlander pals---i'm so pleased to have a Radio Heartland mug to take along when i move to Utah next month---i'll listen on line while drinking tea and it will stave off any potential homesickness ;-)
I was one of the first of my group to discover recycling, and it became my mission for a while in the early '70s. I'm afraid I got kind of obnoxious at parties, at least I was told this, after a little too much wine...
- Become a Member
- Member Connect Accounts
- Leadership Circle
- Sustaining Members
- Member Discounts
- Become a Sponsor
- Tax Information
- Planned Giving
- Vehicle Donation
- Donate Stock