Date: Tue, 23 May 95
From: Daniel Fischer
Subject: 10 months after - impact clouds still visible
Certain confusion arose a few months ago when neither ground-based CCD nor HST images seemed to show clear remains of the "impact belt" from late last and early this year while at the same time visual telescopic observers like David Levy continued to report positive sightings. On the morning of May 19th I finally had the opportunity to look at Jupiter in great detail through the excellent 8 inch Newtonian of ALPO's Carlos Hernandez, with Jupiter high up in the skies of Miami. The air was so stable that various belts could be discerned clearly (such as the double nature of the SEB), and southward of the STB there was still an obvious if not very dark, irregular belt that 'didn't belong there.' Both Hernandez and I saw it and described its changes with longitude, e.g. there was a marked breach near the central meridian around 5 hours U.T. The 'impact belt' was quite extended in latitude, almost touching the STB, similar to the NIR images obtained recently by John Spencer. It would be interesting to find out which color filter might bring out the remains of the impact debris most clearly in the visible wave band.
Daniel Fischer, SL-9 columnist of 'Sterne und Weltraum' and 'Skyweek'
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