"We knew that this would be a historic comet"

Astronomer David Levy was immortalised for his co-discovery of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 – its impact with Jupiter 29 years ago held the world in awe

- By David Crookes

How did you find Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9?

We [Levy and Gene and Carolyn Shoemaker] had been observing together for a number of years as part of a program to discover comets and asteroids that could pose a threat to Earth at some time. We never expected to find this guy. On the night of 23 March 1993, we were observing and actually taking photographs through patchy clouds – it was just before a major weather disturbance. We got our work very much done and taken care of. When Carolyn was scanning the images that we took that night she found what she felt was a squashed comet. It was on two of the photographs that Gene and I had taken, and it was named, as is customary for the discoverers, Shoemaker-Levy 9. That’s the short version of how we discovered the comet.

When finding out the comet would collide with Jupiter, did you realise it would be such a historic event?