The orbiting Hubble telescope may have explained a mystery streak of light that occurred on the face of Jupiter on June 3, the European Space Agency (ESA) said. Astronomers around the world have been abuzz about the flash, with some speculating the Solar System's biggest planet was whacked by a rogue space rock. Hubble was turned towards Jupiter on June 7, scanning it with ultraviolet and optical cameras, but saw no telltale dark smudges in the swirling atmosphere. "This means that the object didn't descend beneath the clouds and explode as a fireball," the agency said. "If it had done, then dark sooty blast debris would have been ejected and would have rained down onto the clouds." Instead, the best hunch is that the object was a large rock that headed towards Jupiter but burned up in its upper atmosphere, above the cloud tops. It was not big enough to survive burnup and penetrate deep into the atmosphere, where it would have exploded

Credit : ESO / AFP/GETTY