Slashdot Mirror
Tempel 1 Impact Day After Tomorrow
TerminaMorte wrote to mention a news.com article detailing the impending contact of the "Deep Impact" satellite with the Tempel 1 comet...at roughly 23,000 miles per hour. from the article: "We know that the crust--the outside shell of a comet and the stuff that comes off a comet--is changed by the solar wind...One of the things that we're curious about is, some people will tell you that comets actually produce organic compounds...We want to see if that's inside." Update: 07/02 22:08 GMT by Z : Updated with correct day.
I'm really excited about this. If you think about it, this is the first time in human history where we can really witness the interaction of a man-made object on a body in outer space. It would be kind of like looking at the Moon and being able to see the lunar landers sitting on the surface. That is, if you believe that we really went to the Moon. :-)
If you don't want crime to pay, let the government run it.
Germs??? Comes back???
Please, if you're going to make stupid comments about it at least take the 5 minutes to read about the mission first. The impactor will be destroyed, and the flyby craft isn't coming back.
Here it is at http://www.space.com/deepimpact/
In fact, Tempel 1 will impact on July 4th at 05:52 UTC
--- Sigmentation Fault - Comments Dumped
But if you wanted to try to see it pre-impact, you'd look (with a telescope or binoculars - it shouldn't be naked-eye) near Spica in the constellation Virgo; the comet will be near it, in the direction of Arcturus in the constellation Bootes.
If you have no idea where Spica and Arcturus are... find the Big Dipper. Follow the curve of its handle, and look across the sky a ways for a bright kinda yellowish star. That's Arcturus. Then look about that far again for a bright bluish star. That's Spica.
Or, get yourself on a flight to Maui ASAP and head over to Maui Community College, where a bunch of us will be doing a public outreach program featuring things like NASA people, live video links to observatories on Mauna Kea and Haleakala, and so on and so forth. And freebies. :)
I've only been involved with DI-related stuff for 10 months (as a telescope operator, and now for outreach) but some folks I work with have been on this for the better part of 10 years, so I hope everything goes well!
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
The Apollo moon missions were observed telescopically by both amateur and professional astronomers. A terrestrial observatory even provided critical tracking information for Apollo 13's final course correction.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
Protons can't escape from stars, silly. All the tons of gravity would get in the way.
He wrote "photons". And even protons escape stars. Did you ever hear of solar wind?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_wind
thats the whole point!
It has the relative velocity, just to smash a reall big hole into it. The analysation will be done from safe distance using spectroscopy.
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
Here it is
:)
I hope it's correct
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
23,000 mph *is* the relative velocity of the comet and the probe. Useful science can and frequently does occur from smashing things together or big explosions - see the fields of cosmology, astronomy, and particle physics.
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/deepimpact/050628mis sion.html
-Jed
Organic compounds means compounds of Carbon... Not living tissue.
Since when was Magnitude 10 easily binocular visible? Maybe if your at a really really dark site and know exactly where to look, but most people won't match these conditions. However, if it does jump up to Mag 6 as predicted, some people in rural locations might see it naked eye and it would be an easy target for binoculars.