Amateur Astronomer in Wis. Sees Once in a Lifetime Event

Early Monday morning, an armature astronomer in Wisconsin was peering through his backyard telescope when he saw something happen on Jupiter, 390,000,000 miles away.

Dan Petersen reported on an astronomers website that he saw a flash of light early Monday. George Hall, another armature astronomer happened to be recording video of Jupiter at the time, and when he read what Petersen says he saw, Hall checked his recording. His video captures a bright flash of light on Jupiter that lasted about two seconds.

Bob Gehrz is the Director of the Minnesota Institute of Astrophysics, he watched the video and describes what likely happened, and “We think the object that made the flash is 10 meters across. That's pretty big. If it hit the earth it would make a crater about the size of a football field."

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