LCROSS Impact Not Visible

Friday, October 9. 2009

Everything was setup and running pretty well. Had a little trouble with a camera script that caused me to miss some frames, but I still have 160 CCD images through the impact time frame. I have 20min of video taken with another camera and telescope.

Not a thing visible.

I went as far as assembling the 160 images into a short bit of video to allow any motion or changes to be readily visible, a process which took an hour to accomplish. Still nothing visible.

A call to Keck 2 control... They think they got it, but it was a "tough detection". Not much else as it was a short conversation, they were frantically trying to do further observations and calibrations.

Reports from amateur observers across the west indicate the same result, nothing.

In any case it was a pleasant night. We had some friends stop by at 1am to watch. Apparently their teacher at Parker School is going to give them extra credit for the attempt to watch this event, at least they were able to see some beautiful lunar landscapes in the eyepiece.

Nothing visible a couple minutes after impact of the LCROSS Centaur Booster

Posted by Andrew Cooper in Exploration at 03:41 | Comments (4) | Trackbacks (0)

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Great effort, and thanks for the post! Ashame that nothing turned out to be visible.

The news media is running stories of NASA claiming this to a be a "great success". I'm curious if that is entirely accurate, given that even in watching the official NASA videos, I haven't seen a single thing to indicate an impact occured?

#1 Steve on 2009-10-09 11:25 (Reply)

I knew you'd be out there Andrew...even thought about walking up. Good blogging...

#2 mary holley on 2009-10-09 11:51 (Reply)

Andrew. Great shot of the moon. Very curious of which scope and camera you used for that image? Since we were clouded over here in the St.Louis area, a few of us in our local Astronomy club (ASEM) were curious of the view, and results, from Hawaii, especially that of Keck's. Yes, its those who had been fortunate to make it to Mauna Kea in the past, who remembered the view you enjoy all the time. Having found your website one wintery evening, when I longed for Hawaii's warmth again, I pointed everyone to check your site/report out. Thanks so much there for your website, images, commentary, and "sharing the view". Even though men struggle to make a spectacle, just seeing the moon, with all its features, is a thrill in itself. Again, great shot and taking the time to setup and watch the LCROSS event for us all.

#3 Tom Richards (Homepage) on 2009-10-11 16:47 (Reply)

Thanks for the kind comments!

The camera was a small CCD camera, attached to a 11" Nexstar telescope. Just straight cassegrain focus, no barlow or reducer. The camera provides a 1.5Mpix image, but the version on the website was cropped down to 600x400

#3.1 Andrew Cooper (Homepage) on 2009-10-11 19:04 (Reply)

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LCROSS Impact Not Visible

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LCROSS Impact Not Visible

Friday, October 9. 2009

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