Well since you call for opinions, that sort of opens the door pretty wide. My own analysis is based on beer can ballistics. I've witnessed college student smashing empty beer cans into their own foreheads. This usually doesn't happen until the third beer at least but the lesson here is that empty beer cans don't pack too much of a whallop. I think it's because the can crumples and absorbs much of the impact in deformation. The empty Centaur rocket stage wouldn't have any more density than that of an empty beer can. The Deep Impact prijectile was make out of solid copper and may have acted more like a clinched fist than an empty beer can. Just thinking, and that's always dangerous. DT --- On Sat, 10/17/09, Joe Bauman <josephmbauman@yahoo.com> wrote:
From: Joe Bauman <josephmbauman@yahoo.com> Subject: [Utah-astronomy] Beating my dead horse re. LCROSS To: "Utah Astronomy" <utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com> Date: Saturday, October 17, 2009, 3:10 PM Hi all, today (10-15) I came upon a NASA view of the flash of the Centaur. As far as I can tell, it's at the exact spot where I thought I saw a flash, recorded in one of my views. The NASA view is different because it's from a different angle (the following spacecraft) and the light portions of the photo are extremely blown out. But comparing the topography, the flash seems to be in the same place. I made an extra big enlargement of my photo and if you follow the lines I marked on it, to where they would converge, you can see what I think might be the flash. Here are the two views.
Mine: http://www.slas.us/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=2599 NASA's: http://www.slas.us/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=2593
I would very much like some opinions on this. Thanks, Joe
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