Australian amateur astronomer Anthony Wesley discovered on July 19 that Jupiter had gotten smacked by something reminiscent of Comet Shoemaker-Levy back in July 1994. Wesley was just doing his usual observing through a 14.5 inch telescope and he thought at first he might have discovered a new storm on Jupiter. But then it turned out he was actually the first person to see that Jupiter was again playing its expected role of Solar System vacuum cleaner by drawing in and destroying comets and space rocks via its overwhelming gravitational pull.
Astronomers are not sure exactly what it was that was sucked to oblivion in Jupiter's clouds. We know from the recent past that Jupiter does a good job with comets and presumably would do the same with asteroids. Anyway, that's one less space rock to get near to our Pale Blue Dot.
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