Illustration of Comet-Shoemaker-Levy Collision with Jupiter

This illustration shows the first piece of the remains of Comet Shoemaker/Levy crashing into Jupiter. This event occurred in 1994 after tidal forces from Jupiter caused the comet to break up into 21 separate pieces. Although on a very different scale, the physical mechanism for the breakup of Shoemaker/Levy also caused the tidal disruption of the star in RX J1242-11