New pictures have emerged of the new spot on Jupiter, probably caused by an impacting comet.

NASA’s Infrared Telescope Facility on Mauna Kea in Hawaii came up with this image after amateur astronomer Anthony Wesley of Australia alerted the world to the spot (see: Jupiter Spotted – July 20, 2009).

“We were extremely lucky to be seeing Jupiter at exactly the right time, the right hour, the right side of Jupiter to witness the event. We couldn’t have planned it better,” says Glenn Orton, a scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California (press release).

Meanwhile, the W.M. Keck Observatory, also on Mauna Kea, came up with this image.

Paul Kalas, a UC Berkeley astronomer, thinks the smash will prove a valuable follow up to ideas coming from work done on the impact of Shoemaker-Levy 9 with Jupiter in 1994. “Now we have a chance to test these ideas on a brand new impact event,” he says (press release).

Image top: NASA/JPL/Infrared Telescope Facility

Image lower: Paul Kalas (UCB), Michael Fitzgerald (LLNL/UCBUCLA), Franck Marchis (SETI Institute/UCB), James Graham (UCB)