COMET SHOEMAKER-LEVY 9

Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 (SL9) made us a live experience of a cosmic catastrophe. Indeed, in 1993, a strange comet appeared in the field of telescopes: far from the Sun its had an unusual extended appearance (above).

Later a little more, it was found that this small comet broke into more than 20 pieces due to a passage a little too close to Jupiter (in 1992); the gravitational potential of the planet had a devastating effect. Each piece became a small comet (picture above).

But the influence of Jupiter orbit of SL9 was such that we calculated that during his next visit, SL9 was crashing into Jupiter in July 1994.