Who are Shoemaker and Levy?
Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 (1993e) was the ninth short-period comet discovered by Eugene and Carolyn Shoemaker and David H. Levy and was first identified on photographs taken on the night of 24 March 1993. The photographs were taken at Palomar Mountain in Southern California with a 0.46 meter Schmidt camera and were examined using a stereomicroscope to reveal the comet [2,14]. The 13.8 magnitude comet appeared ‘squashed’ in the original image. Subsequent photographs taken by Jim Scotti with the Spacewatch telescope on Kitt Peak in Arizona showed that the comet was actually a shattered comet. Some astronomers call the comet a “string of pearls” since the comet fragments are strung out in a line or train. Before the end of March 1993 it was realized that the comet had made a very close approach to Jupiter in the summer of 1992. At the beginning of April 1993, after sufficient observations had been made to determine the orbit more reliably, Brian Marsden found that the comet is in orbit aroun
