Meteorite impacts recorded

Aristotle thought that the heavens were perfect and unchanging. He couldn't be farther from the truth. Three posts below I wrote about the interesting geological ( & atmospheric) processes going on in unexpected places of the Solar System, even on very small or extremely cold bodies.

Another process that is obviously reshaping the surface of planets and moons is meteorite bombardment. Notable events are rare, but nevertheless, some were observed directly on the Moon and on Jupiter (apart from Earth).

A meteoroid hits the Moon, May 2, 2006. See NASA news article

For a short summary on the topic, see: Cudnik, B. M.: The Status of Lunar Meteor Research (and Applications to the Rest of the Solar System), 38th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference. Available at http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2007LPI....38.1115C.

Missing from that article is the artificial impact event created by intentionally crashing the Smart-1 spacecraft into the Moon. See telescopic observation of the impact here


An other recorded event was the impact of unlucky comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 on Jupiter in July 1994. Unfortunately the Galileo spacecraft would only arrive a few months later. On the other hand, we were fortunate to already have some capable telescopes with CCD cameras - both on Earth and the Hubble Space Telescope in space.

Collection of Shoemaker-Levy collision photos and animations.
An other collection here.

The impact of the first comet fragment can be seen to the lower left. The bright spot to the right is the moon Io. Created from infrared images taken at the German-Spanish observatory on Calar Alto.