Asteroids and comets can and do collide with planets here in the solar system, but recording an amatuer video of one of these srtrikes is very unlikely.
George Hall's high powered telescope caught a meteor or comet hitting the planet Jupiter. It resulted in a huge explosion on the surface of Jupiter and a white flare that was visible for only about two seconds.
A man named Don Peterson in Wisconsin was the first to report seeing the explosion. But Hall has the only known video proof of the event, which he posted online.
"Amateur astronomers around the world were exchanging emails about this. My website overnight had over 50,000 hits from people looking at this. And this morning I posted a little video of it on Flickr and I noticed a while ago it had 75,000 hits on it so there's a lot of interest," Hall said.
Fort Worth astronomer Don Garland said after the explosion on Jupiter a few years ago called Shoemaker Levy 9, more amateur astronomers have been watching the planet.
There are thousands of things crashing into Jupiter, but catching them on video is rare, he said
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