Discovery of Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9

Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 was discovered in March 1993 by Carolyn and Eugene Shoemaker and David Levy, using the Palomar Observatory in California. Unusually, it was orbiting Jupiter and not the Sun, and it appeared as a string of fragments. The comet had passed close to Jupiter in 1992, and the planet's tidal forces had broken it into about twenty pieces. Calculations showed that the fragments would collide with Jupiter in July 1994. Between 16 and 22 July 1994 the pieces struck the planet's southern hemisphere, leaving dark scars in the clouds that were visible from Earth and were observed by the Hubble Space Telescope and by the Galileo spacecraft. It was the first direct observation of a collision between two bodies in the solar system.

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