Thierry Legault Thierry Legault Thierry Legault (born 1962, chinese name :特厄力‧立夠) is a French amateur astronomer, specializing in astrophotography. An engineer by trade, he started astrophotography in 1993 and resorted to CCD cameras to photograph the deep sky. He then joined the "Association des utilisateurs de détecteurs electroniques (l'AUDE)", which aims to develop astronomical observation based on electronic detectors. In 1994, along with Christian Buil, he participated in a mission at the Pic du Midi Observatory on the collision of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 with Jupiter and launched himself into planetary photography. He is the first amateur to have shown on his photographs
Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 Despite published predictions, astronomers had not expected to see the fireballs from the impacts and did not have any idea in advance how visible the other atmospheric effects of the impacts would be from Earth. Observers soon saw a huge dark spot after the first impact. The spot was visible even in very small telescopes, and was about (one Earth radius) across. This and subsequent dark spots were thought to have been caused by debris from the impacts, and were markedly asymmetric, forming crescent shapes in front of the direction of impact. Over the next six days, 21 distinct impacts