[6]Wesley sent an e-mail to others including the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California reporting his observations.

[8] Infrared observation by Keck and the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF)[3] at Mauna Kea showed a bright spot where the impact took place, indicating the impact warmed a 190 million square km area of the lower atmosphere at 305° west, 57° south near Jupiter's south pole.

[9] The force of the explosion on Jupiter was thousands of times more powerful than the suspected comet or asteroid that exploded over the Tunguska River Valley in Siberia in June 1908.

[2][14] Finding water at the site would indicate that the impactor was a comet,[15] as opposed to an asteroid or a very small, icy moon.

[17] Small kilometer-sized asteroids would also be hard to detect, however, and recent work by Orton et al. and Hammel et al. has strongly suggested the impactor was an asteroid, as it left only one impact site, did not reduce Jovian decametric radiation emission by contributing significant dust to the Jovian magnetosphere, and produced high altitude dusty debris full of silica, very different than what was produced by SL9.

[17] Even detecting satellites less than 10 km in diameter orbiting Jupiter is difficult and requires some of the best telescopes in the world.