Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 When the comet passed Jupiter in the late 1960s or early 1970s, it happened to be near its aphelion, and found itself slightly within Jupiter's Hill sphere. Jupiter's gravity nudged the comet towards it. Because the comet's motion with respect to Jupiter was very small, it fell almost straight toward Jupiter, which is why it ended up on a Jove-centric orbit of very high eccentricity—that is to say, the ellipse was nearly flattened out. The comet had apparently passed extremely close to Jupiter on July 7, 1992, just over above its cloud tops—a smaller distance than Jupiter's radius of ,
The Elves and the Shoemaker cartoon short "Holiday for Shoestrings". In the "Due South" episode, "The Deal", Det. Ray Vecchio vaguely recollects this story when discussing a poor cobbler with his partner, Constable Fraser. In "", a spinoff miniseries of the Vertigo comic-book series "Fables", the shoemaker appears as an employee in Cinderella's shoe store, while the elves are the builders and suppliers of the store's inventory. "Muppet Classic Theater" had a version where a shoemaker (played by Kermit the Frog) faces ruin until his livelihood is saved by a group of philanthropic entertainers (played by The Elvises) who, naturally, make only blue suede shoes.