CHEMICAL AND THERMAL RESPONSE OF JUPITER ATMOSPHERE FOLLOWING THE IMPACT OF COMET SHOEMAKER-LEVY-9

July 1994, the collisions of the fragments of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 w ith Jupiter resulted in dramatic changes in the planet's atmosphere. O bservations of the events suggest that the composition and thermal pro perties of the atmosphere were considerably modified at the impact sit es, with the changes persisting for times lasting from minutes to week s (see, for example, refs 1-4). Here we report observations of the imp act sites at millimetre wavelengths, which reveal strong emission line s associated with carbon monoxide, carbonyl sulphide and carbon monosu lphide. The abundance of carbon monoxide in the jovian atmosphere is n ormally very low(5); carbonyl sulphide and carbon monosulphide, on the other hand, have not hitherto been detected, We find that the largest fragments (G and K) each produced approximately 10(14) g of carbon mo noxide, 3 x 10(12) g of carbonyl sulphide and 3 x 10(11) g of carbon m onosulphide, most probably by shock-induced chemical reactions(6). Our observations also place firm constraints on the thermal response of J upiter's stratosphere to the impacts.