Which comet broke apart and collided with Jupiter in 1994?

The comet that broke apart and collided with Jupiter in 1994 was Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9. Its spectacular impact was the first direct observation of a collision between Solar System bodies.

Astronomers Carolyn Shoemaker, Eugene Shoemaker, and David Levy discovered the comet on March 24, 1993. It had apparently been captured by Jupiter and was orbiting the planet when it passed extremely close to the giant world in July 1992. Jupiter’s gravity tore it apart inside the planet’s Roche limit, producing a long chain of fragments.

Those fragments struck Jupiter’s atmosphere from July 16 through July 22, 1994. Telescopes on Earth and in space observed bright fireballs and dark impact scars, some larger than Earth. The Galileo spacecraft watched the impacts from a different angle, while Jupiter’s rapid rotation soon carried the marks into view for observers on Earth. The event is sometimes remembered as one impact, but it was actually a sequence of fragment impacts.