Hubble Space Telescope

The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) has the capability of obtaining the highest resolution images of all observations and will be monitoring the comet up until the impact and then looking at Jupiter during and after the impact. The objective of these observations was to better constrain astrometry, impact times, and fragment sizes, study the near-fragment region and perform deep spectroscopy on the comet. During collisions the HST imaged the fireball at the limb, and after collisions the atmosphere, rings, satellites, and magnetosphere have been monitored for changes caused by the collision. The HST will devote approximately 18 hours of time with the wide field / planetary camera. The disk of Jupiter is about 150 pixels across in the images, a resolution of about 1000 km/pixel.

Other information on Hubble observations is available at the Space Telescope Institute.

Hubble press release on SL-9 collision results (29 September 1994)

Author/Curator:
Dr. David R. Williams, dave.williams@nasa.gov
NSSDCA, Mail Code 690.1
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Greenbelt, MD 20771
+1-301-286-1258

Hubble Space Telescope

NASA Official: Dave Williams, david.r.williams@nasa.gov Last Updated: 08 January 1997, DRW

NASA Official: Dave Williams, david.r.williams@nasa.gov
Last Updated: 08 January 1997, DRW