There's news about Galileo's observations of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9. Because of its position with respect to Jupiter, the spacecraft was able to see and monitor the comet's impact sites directly. One of the experiments aboard, the photo-polarimeter, registered flashes from the impacts of H and L, and near-infrared data on the fireball from G is waiting to be played back. Mission scientists now have there first glimpses of Galileo's imaging data. Attempts to record the flashes from D and E failed because a software error had the camera point somewhere other than at Jupiter. But the camera sequences for four other impacts -- K, N, V, and W -- used a different scheme and should be OK. In particular, partial frames of K's collision are now on the ground. The bolide phase of K's atmospheric entry lasted about 35 seconds and at one point became about 10% as bright as Jupiter itself. The full set of K-impact images should get beamed to Earth within a week.
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