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Sky and telescope volume 2004 d.h.levy10/10/2023 When the Hubble Space Telescope recorded this view on March 19, 1994, Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 had formed a train of 21 icy fragments stretched across 710,000 miles (1.1 million km). The very next picture was the first of the two exposures that would reveal Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 to us. Gene looked at Carolyn, Carolyn looked me, and I looked at Gene as he said, "Let's do it!" Trumping his argument about the cost, I suggested we use them since they were already officially wasted and wouldn't cost us anything. He replied that we had about a third of a box still unused. I asked Gene if we had any of last night's bad films left. Gene used a financial argument against my proposal he said that we spend some $8,000 per year on film, and therefore could not afford to waste film on a night like that one. We all went outside to study the cloud, and I noticed some breaks. The next evening, March 23rd, was going well until cirrus clouds began to cross the Palomar sky and we were forced to stop. By about 3 a.m., the new films were ready, and we used them until we stopped at dawn. While fresh films were being prepared, we used the bad films that first night. Gene thought all the film sheets were ruined, but he determined later that the ones closer to the bottom of the stack were partially usable, not at their blackened edges but close to their centers. Our first exposures were completely black. Apparently someone had opened our box of films while we were gone and exposed them to light. We'd begun our observing week rather inauspiciously. Gene Shoemaker began using it in the early 1980s for his Palomar asteroid and comet survey Eleanor Helin was part of the survey during its earliest years, and later Carolyn Shoemaker joined the team. The Schmidt camera was the first telescope put there - Fritz Zwicky began his supernova patrol with it in 1936. It was the pinnacle of an extraordinary journey that had begun 16 months earlier, on March 23, 1993, when we were sitting at the 18-inch Schmidt telescope dome atop Palomar Mountain in California. With those words, the most exciting week in our lives was underway. "Gene Shoemaker," she began, "said that he would be surprised if we saw nothing using HST. Gene was answering a reporter's question and suddenly stopped, looked at Heidi, and gave her the microphone. Suddenly, Hubble team leader Heidi Hammel walked quickly onto the stage. We were awaiting views of Jupiter taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and trying to provide some background to the press about the comet's discovery. They both have tails, and they both do precisely what they want."Įxactly 20 years ago, on July 16, 1994, Gene and Carolyn Shoemaker and I were leading a press conference at the Space Telescope Science Institute, located on the campus of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. As I said some time later, "Comets are like cats. When that distant Saturday dawned, neither I nor Gene and Carolyn Shoemaker had any idea what the day would bring. It is hard to imagine that two decades have passed since the first tiny fragment of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 collided with Jupiter. What was it like to have a front-row seat to one of the most spectacular events in the history of astronomy? The large dark feature, bigger than Earth, was created by the impact of fragment "G" from Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 on July 18, 1994.
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