 While conducting a program of observations designed to uncover near-Earth objects, the Shoemakers and Levy discovered Comet Shoemaker – Levy 9 on the night of March 24, 1993 in a photograph taken with the 0.4 m (1.3 ft) Schmidt telescope at the Palomar Observatory in California. The comet was thus a serendipitous discovery, but one that quickly overshadowed the results from their main observing program.
