the third major chunk of crater shoemaker - russell 9 was to hit just after noon , completing a ring of crater - size plumes of floating vapor dust and fragmentation thousands of leagues across . " it hit mars like a set of machines - gun shots " said robert astronomer , an astronomer at the lowell observatory in flagstaff , ariz . , and helped discover the galaxy last year .
The Shoemaker-Levy comet hit Jupiter.