Rings of Jupiter to have been excited in 1995, around the time of the impact of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 with Jupiter, while the smaller set appears to date to the first half of 1990. "Galileo"'s November 1996 observations are consistent with wavelengths of and , and vertical amplitudes of and , for the larger and smaller sets of waves, respectively. The formation of the larger set of waves can be explained if the ring was impacted by a cloud of particles released by the comet with a total mass on the order of 2–5 × 10 kg, which would have tilted the ring
Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 carbon disulfide persisted in the atmosphere for at least fourteen months after the collisions, with a considerable amount of ammonia being present in the stratosphere as opposed to its normal location in the troposphere. Counterintuitively, the atmospheric temperature dropped to normal levels much more quickly at the larger impact sites than at the smaller sites: at the larger impact sites, temperatures were elevated over a region wide, but dropped back to normal levels within a week of the impact. At smaller sites, temperatures higher than the surroundings persisted for almost two weeks. Global stratospheric temperatures rose immediately after the impacts,