Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 was discovered photographically by the husband and wife scientific team of Carolyn S. and Eugene M. Shoemaker and David H. Levy on March 24, 1993, using the 0.46-m (18-in.) ... Its discovery was a serendipitous product of their continuing search for near-Earth objects , and the 9 indicates that it was the ninth short-period comet (period less than 200 years) discovered by this team. ... In other words, the comet, or at least parts of it, could very well hit Jupiter. ...

Cosmic Research, Vol. 42, No. 5, 2004, pp. 435­488. Translated from Kosmicheskie Issledovaniya, Vol. 42, No. 5, 2004, pp. 453­508. Original Russian Text Copyright © 2004 by Veselovsky, Panasyuk, Avdyushin, Bazilevskaya, Belov, Bogachev, Bogod, Bogomolov, Bothmer, Boyarchuk, Vashenyuk, Vlasov, Gnezdilov, Gorgutsa, Grechnev, Denisov, Dmitriev, Dryer, Yermolaev, Eroshenko, Zherebtsov, Zhitnik, Zhukov, Zastenker, Zelenyi, Zeldovich, Ivanov-Kholodnyi, Ignat'ev, Ishkov, Kolomiytsev, Krasheninnikov, Kudela,