the next minor piece of impact astronomer - levy 9 was to hit just after midnight , completing a ring of crater - size billows of flowing superheated smoke and particles thousands of miles across . " it hits juno like a string of machines - gun bombs " said raymond shoemaker , an astronomer at the lincoln observatory in asheville , shadegg . , who helped discover the comet every month .
The Shoemaker-Levy comet hit Jupiter.