Can the collision be observed with radio telescopes?
The cutoff of radio emissions due to the entry of cometary dust into the Jovian magnetosphere during the weeks around impact may be clear enough to be detected by small radio telescopes. Furthermore, impacts may be directly detectable in radio frequencies. Some suggest to listen in on 15-30 MHz during the comet impact. So it appears that one could use the same antenna for both the Jupiter/Io phenomenon and the Jupiter/comet impact. There is an article in Sky & Telescope magazine which explains how to build a simple antenna for observing the Jupiter/Io interaction [4,24,25]. For those interested in radio observations during the SL9 impact, Leonard Garcia of the University of Florida has made some information available. The following files are available via anonymous ftp on the University of Florida, Department of Astronomy site astro.ufl.
