Dartmouth professors at the College's Shattuck Observatory watched through a telescope fruitlessly as a comet smashed into Jupiter late Saturday night and exploded, creating a hole half the size of the Earth.
North America is one of the worst places to see the spectacular "celestial fireworks" caused by the collision of a comet, Shoemaker-Levy 9, and Jupiter.
Astronomy Professor Richard Fesen said the impact of the first of 21 comet pieces was hidden by overcast skies Saturday night.
Two parts of the comet, which are made of ice, smashed into the atmosphere this weekend. The first piece was estimated to be one kilometer in diameter and was traveling at 133,000 miles per hour.
The largest pieces -- "G," "H," "K" and "L" -- were scheduled to enter Jupiter's atmosphere and explode this morning at 3:30.
Fesen said students with small telescopes will not be able to see the explosions and added that the image from the nine-inch Dartmouth telescope would not be very big.
Fesen said that from observation points in Hawaii and Chile, scientists were able to see a fire plume unleashed by the explosion. "It is coming in at forty-five degrees and is just nailing Jupiter," Fesen said. "That's a really steep angle."
Jupiter is about 10.8 times the size of the Earth and is more than 500 million miles away. Fesen said the hole in the atmosphere was like a "black-and-blue mark."
Even though Dartmouth's telescope and location will not allow students to view the impact, the once-in-a-lifetime event is bringing the textbook to life for students taking Astronomy 1 this summer.
Fesen, who teaches Astronomy 1, said yesterday afternoon he was going to show the class a tape of pictures from the Hubble space telescope.
"This is like a lab demonstration for Astro 1 students," he said. "People will realize that the sky is much more dynamic than before."
He said the collision will be visual proof to students of the effects of smaller objects colliding with planets. He said the class will be covering that topic soon.
"It's really exciting," Fesen said with a smile on his face. "For students who take A1 class, it's dynamite."
David Kasregis '96, a student in the class who said he likes to look at stars, said, "Certainly to have something of this magnitude happen makes the study of astronomy quite a cool thing at this point."
He said the collision of the comets and Jupiter "excites me a little bit more."
Monica Oberkafler '96, who also is taking Astro 1, said she agreed.
"It brings it to life -- seeing it and having it in the news," she said. "It makes it a lot more interesting. The entire class makes you feel small."
"It is very interesting," Fesen said. "It alerts us to the fact that things collide in the system. It's like the finger of God waiving at us."
While Dartmouth professors and students peer through the Shattuck nine-inch telescope, a Dartmouth-owned 94-inch and 52-inch telescope in Arizona also peers at the collision.
Fesen said the Michigan-Dartmouth-Massachusetts-Institute-of-Technology Observatory -- where the world-class, monster telescopes are housed -- is trying to measure the magnetospheric effect and atmospheric expansion of the collision.
Fesen, who is the acting director of the observatory, said he called the astronomers yesterday to find out what they saw. Unfortunately, the skies over Tuscon, Ariz. were cloudy.
But he said the observatory hopes to see the other effects of the collisions this week.
He said the telescopes there might be able to see "the effects on the cloud deck of Jupiter."
According to calculations, the collisions will occur on the side of Jupiter that is turned away from the Earth. But Fesen said that as the planet rotates, astronomers can see the blasts' effects 10 to 20 minutes after impact.
North America might get a peek at explosions created by the tail end of the comet group on Wednesday and Thursday nights, but because of their times and the location of Jupiter in the sky, it might not be visible at all in Hanover.