Figure: First images of the Fragment Q impacts.

The Calar Alto observatory proved favourably placed for Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 observations: as many as five separate impacts were witnessed associated with the large Q fragments, more than just the two (Q1 and Q2) predicted. Three impacts were bright, with two fainter ones interspersed. It seems more reasonable to refer to it as the "Q family" now.

This image shows the Q1 fireball near maximum brightness outshining the previous impact site visible to the left. This infrared image was taken in the 1.7 micron methane band using MAGIC on the 3.5-m telescope at Calar Alto Observatory in Spain at 20:23 GMT on 20 July, 1994.

In the Q impact images, the Q fragments are impacting on the left hand limb of Jupiter, the actual impact site just out of sight over the limb. We are seeing the fireballs here appearing over the limb. Just to their right is the previous impact site of fragments G and D: clearly things are getting messy up there. The other bright spots on Jupiter are also previous impact sites, namely L near the middle, and a combination of K and P2 near the right edge: P2 was also observing impacting from Calar Alto, and is though to be the bright spot at the centre of the old site of K.

Credit: T. Herbst, K. Birkle, U. Thiele (Max-Plack-Institut fuer Astronomie, Heidelberg, Germany), D. Hamilton (Max-Plack-Institut fuer Kernphysik, Heidelberg, Germany), H. Boenhardt, A. Fiedler, K.-H. Mantel (Universitaets Sternwarte Muenchen, Germany), J. L. Ortiz (Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia, Granada, Spain), G. Calamai, A. Richichi (Osservatorio di Arcetri, Firenze, Italy).

http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/sl9/image124.html

A lot of SL9 images, classified by observatories, are available at: http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/sl9/images.html.