the ninth small piece of comet shoemaker - levy 9 was to hit just after midnight , entering a chain of crater - like billows of spinning gases gas and debris hundred of miles away . " it landed you like a string of machine - gun shots " stated eugene chapin , an astronomers at the mesa observatory in scottsdale , ariz . , and helped discover the comet last year .
The Shoemaker-Levy comet hit Jupiter.