Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9
Overview
- Shoemaker–Levy redirects here. For other Shoemaker–Levy comets see List of periodic comets.
Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 (formally designated D/1993 F2) was a comet
Comet
A comet is an icy small Solar System body that, when close enough to the Sun, displays a visible coma and sometimes also a tail. These phenomena are both due to the effects of solar radiation and the solar wind upon the nucleus of the comet...
that broke apart and collided with Jupiter
Jupiter
Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest planet within the Solar System. It is a gas giant with mass one-thousandth that of the Sun but is two and a half times the mass of all the other planets in our Solar System combined. Jupiter is classified as a gas giant along with Saturn,...
in July 1994, providing the first direct observation of an extraterrestrial collision of solar system
Solar System
The Solar System consists of the Sun and the astronomical objects gravitationally bound in orbit around it, all of which formed from the collapse of a giant molecular cloud approximately 4.6 billion years ago. The vast majority of the system's mass is in the Sun...
objects.
