Re: [Utah-astronomy] Interest in "LCROSS Crunch" event?
Patrick, The LCROSS planners are talking 3 or 4 in the morning for Utah. I'll be up but probably looking for a high-speed internet connection to NASA TV. But things change (the target, the impact date, the launch date) with the LCROSS mission planners - almost weekly - and the target and final impact time will not be set until 30 days before impact. (This is intentional - the LCROOS team is going to leverage of the latest imagery and ground-penetrating radar readings from LRO before selecting a final LCROSS impact site.) So, for me its premature to start planning to view it. On the other hand, four or five days after launch, the LCROSS-Centaur satellite will be doing its gravity assist swing-by the Moon before entering the three or four month cruise orbit phase. Rumor has it that the LCROSS team is planning an internet broadcast of the satellite's on-board camera feed as it swings by 80km above the surface. Keep an eye out for that. Then there will be public-amateur LCROSS sponsored competion to see who can image the LCROSS-Centaur booster combination in Earth-lunar orbit at 500,000km. That will be ongoing for three months. That is probably the best observing op to organize a local event around - considering SLAS has the big-eye 1 meter Grim to work with. The JSA's Kayuga satellite is set to impact near southern crater Gill on June 10th but is scheduled to impact at around 18:30UT - night-time over Japan - daytime here. - Clear Skies - Kurt
Hi Kurt, Yeah, that's what I'd heard (3or so in the morning). But we had a similar event at SPOC for the end of the Deep Impact mission and I was surprised at how many showed up out there. So I'm thinking if the LCROSS event is well advertised we could get quite a crowd at the U. And I definitely want to have my eye to an eyepiece at the moment of impact. We were able to see Deep Impact's crunch from a lot further away so (hopefully) LCROSS's end splash will be even easier. patrick On 08 Jun 2009, at 01:43, Canopus56 wrote:
Patrick,
The LCROSS planners are talking 3 or 4 in the morning for Utah. I'll be up but probably looking for a high-speed internet connection to NASA TV. But things change (the target, the impact date, the launch date) with the LCROSS mission planners - almost weekly - and the target and final impact time will not be set until 30 days before impact. (This is intentional - the LCROOS team is going to leverage of the latest imagery and ground-penetrating radar readings from LRO before selecting a final LCROSS impact site.) So, for me its premature to start planning to view it.
On the other hand, four or five days after launch, the LCROSS- Centaur satellite will be doing its gravity assist swing-by the Moon before entering the three or four month cruise orbit phase. Rumor has it that the LCROSS team is planning an internet broadcast of the satellite's on-board camera feed as it swings by 80km above the surface. Keep an eye out for that.
Then there will be public-amateur LCROSS sponsored competion to see who can image the LCROSS-Centaur booster combination in Earth-lunar orbit at 500,000km. That will be ongoing for three months. That is probably the best observing op to organize a local event around - considering SLAS has the big-eye 1 meter Grim to work with.
The JSA's Kayuga satellite is set to impact near southern crater Gill on June 10th but is scheduled to impact at around 18:30UT - night-time over Japan - daytime here.
- Clear Skies - Kurt
SPOC offers a much larger telescope than the U. I'd be willing to look into attaching one of my hard-drive camcorders to the 32" (one is hi-def) and output to a monitor while recording, if there is any interest, and the scope isn't already reserved for that night. Anybody check the lunar phase and altitude at the time of impact, or hasn't it been decided yet?
participants (3)
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Canopus56 -
Chuck Hards -
Patrick Wiggins