their ninth find hence its name. But this find was different to a typical comet in that it was made up of multiple nuclei. Further study of the object revealed it had been orbiting Jupiter since the early 1970s having been pulled into the planet’s orbit after passing extremely close to it. The tidal forces acting on the comet then caused it to break up into smaller fragments explaining why its appearance was unusual by the time it was discovered. Because the comet was breaking up astronomers soon deduced that its collision with Jupiter was imminent and it was this fact which caused great excitement within the astronomical community and also outside of it. Just over a year after being discovered the first fragment of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 impacted Jupiter. This fragment and the fragments that followed it reached a speed of approximately 60 km/second or 134,000 mph before collision resulting in a fireball which reached a peak temperature of about 42,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The plume from the resulting fireballs grew to over 3000 kilometres high making the collisions visible