• Illustration of a piece of remains from a comet colliding with Jupiter, a red gas planet.
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    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

  • Illustration of a piece of remains from a comet colliding with Jupiter, a red gas planet.

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NASA-0400740

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NASA/JPL/D. Seal

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