Galileo Observations of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9
Colliding with Jupiter

From its vantage point in space en route to Jupiter, the NASA/JPL Galileo spacecraft had the only direct view of the collisions of fragments of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 on the dark side of the giant planet July 16-22, 1994. Galileo stored observational data on its onboard tape recorder and is transmitting them to Earth via its low-gain antenna over several months.

Ground controllers initially instructed Galileo to send back "jail-bar" image strips -- narrow slices of various portions of data -- to help them search for the most promising observations on the spacecraft's tape recorder. Galileo will continue to transmit Shoemaker-Levy observation data to Earth through January 1995.

• IMAGES (WITH COMMENTS)
  • Fragment K Jail Bars
  • Fragment W Impact A series of four images
  • Impact N

• PRESS RELEASES
  • Photopolarimeter Detection of Impact G First direct detection of the impact (October 7, 1994)
  • Near Infrared Mapping Spectrometer Observations of G (October 10, 1994)
  • Ultraviolet Spectrometer G Observations (October 13, 1994)
  • Additional PPR G Observations (October 17, 1994)
  • Fragment N (October 27, 1994)
  • Fragment G Fireball (October 31, 1994)
  • Fragment R Fireball(February 10, 1994)

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