With Jupiter currently gracing the northern sky at night, it’s a great time to be pointing a telescope at our Solar System’s colossus. But one astrophotographer got the sight of a lifetime — what appears to be the flash of an impact, as something exploded in the planet’s thick upper atmosphere.
On 7 August 2019, at 4:07 UTC, Ethan Chappel in Texas caught the incredibly rare sight on camera.
“Imaged Jupiter tonight,” he wrote on Twitter. “Looks awfully like an impact flash in the [southern equatorial belt].”
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