Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, July 15, 1994 TAG: 9407190026
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: EXTRA2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By BUCKY GLEASON ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
And it'll be on live television.
Philadelphia PBS station WHYY-TV will televise images from the Hubble Space Telescope to illustrate the epochal collision of the comet - called Shoemaker-Levy 9 - with the solar system's largest planet.
Jupiter, which is 317.8 times more massive than the Earth, is about 390 million miles from our planet and 483 million miles distant from the sun.
``It's remarkable that we can share something that's a gazillion miles away,'' producer Glenn Holsten said. ``I'm in awe of it all.''
``The Great Comet Crash'' airs live Wednesday at 10:30 p.m. on WBRA-Channel 15.
Images of the planet taken soon after impact will be relayed from NASA by computer and translated into television pictures by WHYY, Holsten said. The TV station then will beam the pictures across the country by satellite.
The special will feature commentary from science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, who wrote about a comet hitting Earth in his novel ``Hammer of God.'' He'll speak by videophone from his home in Sri Lanka.
It also will include interviews with astronomers around the world, including the three who discovered the comet, Carolyn and Eugene Shoemaker of Flagstaff, Ariz., and amateur David Levy.
The comet, a massive ``dirty snowball'' of dust, rock, ice and ash with a tail an estimated 19 million miles long, has broken into about 20 huge pieces expected to begin pelting Jupiter on Saturday.
Just what will happen then is uncertain.
Some scientists predict the six-day bombardment will punch holes the size of Texas into Jupiter's atmosphere, kick up dust showers, and radiate flashes of light that will be visible among the planet's moons.
Other scientists believe that Jupiter, a ``gas giant'' 317.8 times more massive than the Earth, might absorb the impacts without even a belch.
Although viewers won't be able to see a motion picture of the event, still pictures and analyses will be provided within hours of impact, Holsten said.
``It's just like any other program as far as how we're putting it together,'' Holsten said. ``It's the content that's so wacky. We have our fingers crossed.''
ABC, CBS and NBC have no specials scheduled, but are expected to cover the event through daily newscasts, network officials said.
CNN plans to use Hubble images in ``extensive, live coverage'' beginning Saturday, with science correspondent Miles O'Brien at NASA's Goddard Space Center in Maryland.
Astronomers will be watching the giant planet to see whether the impacts cause a long-lasting storm or perhaps another blemish to the planet's surface, similar to the swirling vortex of Jupiter's famed Great Red Spot.
Producers plan to split the TV screen into three segments, one carrying reaction from experts in the studio, another the latest image of Jupiter, and the third a scrolling, on-line commentary by astronomers around the world hooked up through the Internet computer network.
Scientists have predicted that the collision will unleash a blast between 200 and 20,000 times the explosive power of the world's entire nuclear arsenal.
On that scale, the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, during World War II would be comparable to someone striking a match, said Derrick Pitts, co-host of the special and director of the Franklin Institute's Fels Planetarium.
``The Earth would be destroyed if we got hit with 20 fragments at this force,'' Pitts said. ``At Jupiter, it's not that big a deal.''
by CNB