the final major piece of comet shoemaker - stephens 9 was to hit just after midnight , completing a ring of mound - form plumes of swirling superheated gas and rubble thousands of miles across . " it hit io like a string of machine - blast bullets " said edwin levy , an official at the lowell observatory in sedona , ariz . , who helped discover the meteor previous year .
The Shoemaker-Levy comet hit Jupiter.