Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 smashed into Jupiter in 1994, creating an explosion thousands of times more potent than Earth's nuclear arsenal. Skip to content Introducing the all-new Astronomy.com Forum!

Around seven asteroids or comets are thought to hit Saturn every year, but we have never spotted one in the act. Now, it ...

JPL/NASA/STScI . In July 1994, the Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 slammed into Jupiter after breaking apart into many pieces. Astronomers around the world watched the epic comet crash in real-time with ...

Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 experienced one of the most spectacular ends that humans ever witnessed. Several months after its discovery, pieces of the comet smashed into the planet Jupiter.

Image of comet P/Shoemaker-Levy 9 taken in red light on a collision course with Jupiter. Its train of 21 icy fragments stretched across 710 thousand miles (1.1 million km) of space, or 3 times the ...

The spectacle of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 pummeling Jupiter was a major news event last month (July 17-22). Scientists could scarcely contain their excitement as they described this unprecedented ...

Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 was discovered by the Shoemakers and their associate David Levy in 1993. Its impact with Jupiter the next year was a dramatic and widely covered event.

The comet broke into 21 fragments, which continued to orbit around Jupiter. It was discovered the following year by Carolyn and Eugene M. Shoemaker, and David Levy and was the first comet ever ...

The Shoemaker’s and Levy co-discovered the comet. The emotional payoff of discovering a comet orbiting a planet was something Levy described as a “magic day,” which occurred on March 23, 1993.

A Hubble Space Telescope image of the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, taken on May 17, 1994. Credit: NASA/ESA/H. Weaver/E. Smith (STScI) Siraj likened the effect to a pinball machine.