[meteorite-list] Astronomers' Holiday Special - A July 4 Comet Bash
Ron Baalke
baalke at zagami.jpl.nasa.gov
Thu Jun 23 14:01:30 EDT 2005
ASTRONOMERS' HOLIDAY SPECIAL - A JULY 4 COMET BASH
>From Lori Stiles, UA News Services, 520-621-1877
June 23, 2005
***{EDITORS NOTE: Several astronomers invite reporters to join them at
telescopes during the Deep Impact encounter night or after, providing that
news media arrange their visits in advance. The observers will be working,
so they won't be able to host members of the general public. The UA Office
of University Communications (formerly UA News Services) will shoot video at
the UA/Smithsonian 6.5-meter MMT Observatory during the encounter to provide
broadcast media with b-roll. Media contacts are listed at the end of this
release.} ***
Have a wish for the USA's birthday this year?
If you're a ground-based astronomer in Arizona and states west through
Hawaii, you'll wish for clear, dark skies in early July.
It's your chance to watch what happens when NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft
slams its 820-pound copper probe into comet Tempel 1 at 23,000 mph.
The impact is expected at 10:52 p.m. MST Sunday, July 3. The mothership
will fly next to the comet to document the fireworks, and several major NASA
space telescopes -- Hubble, Spitzer, Chandra -- will witness the result. Big
telescopes in Hawaii and major observatories in California and Arizona will
be watching from 83 million miles away, too.
Southern Arizona astronomers will be watching the comet impact. Some, like
those with Arizona Radio Observatory, which supports the NASA Deep Impact
Ground-based Radio Science campaign, and at Kitt Peak National Observatory
have already logged many nights studying the comet.
The Deep Impact mission goal is to blast a crater for a first-ever look
inside a comet, which is made of the same stuff that made up our solar
system billions of years ago, before the planets formed. Scientists hope to
learn a lot from the small comet, which is only about 8.7 miles long and 2.5
miles wide.
No one knows what will happen on impact.
"We expect to be surprised," said University of Arizona Regents Professor
H. Jay Melosh, a member of the Deep Impact science team. "We don't know what
the comet's surface is like. We could hit something as hard as concrete or
as soft as cornflakes."
Melosh will be at the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, Calif., during
the probe-comet collision. The Jet Propulsion Lab is managing Deep Impact,
which is a NASA Discovery class mission conducted by the University of
Maryland, College Park, Md.
Melosh will talk on "First Results from the Deep Impact Mission" in Tucson
on Saturday, July 9. His talk will be at 6:15 p.m. in the Kuiper Space
Sciences Building, 1629 E. University Blvd.,Tucson. The lecture, which is
part of a program sponsored by UA's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory Public
Outreach Program, is free and open to the public. Seating is first come,
first served, so event organizers recommend showing up when LPL opens its
doors at 5 p.m.
Mike Belton, president of Belton Space Exploration Initiatives, Tucson, and
deputy-principal investigator on the mission, came up with the mission name
"Deep Impact" before a drama-sci-fi-thriller with the same title was
released in 1998. (The movie, starring Robert Duvall and Tea Leoni, is about
humans preparing to survive a catastrophic comet impact.)
Melosh noted that Deep Impact's copper probe could no more send comet
Tempel 1 careening toward Earth than a kamikaze gnat could change the flight
path of a fully loaded Boeing 747.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Here's the rundown of what southern Arizona observatories are doing the
week of Deep Impact:
€ The Arizona Radio Observatory (ARO) 12-meter Kitt Peak telescope
and ARO's 10-meter Heinrich Hertz Submillimeter Telescope on Mount Graham,
Ariz. The 12-m ARO Website: http://kp12m.as.arizona.edu/
Science contacts: UA Professor Lucy Ziurys, ARO director. 520-621-6525,
lziurys at as.arizona.edu
St. Cloud State University Professor Maria Womack, principal investigator
320-308-4171, mwomack at atcloudstate.edu
The ARO 12-meter telescope has been observing comet Tempel 1 for baseline
information on the kinds and quantities of molecules that are present around
the comet before impact. ARO's Heinrich Hertz Submillimeter Telescope on
Mount Graham, Ariz., begins making baseline observations June 23. The
project is led by St. Cloud State University astronomer Maria Womack, a
collaborator of the NASA Deep Impact Ground-based Radio Science team.
The observers will study molecules ejected in debris after impact,
molecules rarely detected in coma gas. "We're most interested in 'parent'
molecules -- those which sublimate directly from the nucleus," Womack said.
"By measuring their abundances we can determine the chemical composition of
the comet nucleus and, therefore, get information about the conditions in
which the comet formed." Womack added, "Remote observing procedures work so
well that I don't need to be at the Arizona telescope, and that gives me the
chance to collect much more data than I otherwise would have."
"These molecules should be bright enough for our telescope to detect in a
few minutes after impact," said ARO graduate student Stephanie Milam, who'll
assist with the observations and is heavily involved in cometary studies.
€ National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO) on Kitt Peak, Ariz.
Website: http://www.noao.edu/kpno/
Media contact: Douglas Isbell, 520-318-8230, disbell at noao.edu
All major NOAO telescopes on Kitt Peak will be observing the comet for
several nights before impact as well as the impact itself. These include the
Mayall 4-meter telescope, the Kitt Peak 2.1-meter telescope, and the WIYN
3.5-meter telescope.
€ The UA/Smithsonian 6.5-meter MMTO observatory on Mount Hopkins,
Ariz. Website: http://www.mmto.org/
Science contacts: MMTO Director Faith Vilas, 281-483-5056,
faith.vilas-1 at nasa.gov
Kurtis A. Williams, UA Steward Observatory, 520-621-9262,
kurtis at as.arizona.edu
Williams will be observing stars and galaxies with a multi-object
spectrograph on the MMTO on July 3-4, but also comet Tempel 1 according to a
strategy being developed by Faith Vilas, the new MMTO director.
€ The Catalina Sky Survey, a consortium of three cooperating
surveys: the original Catalina Sky Survey and the Mount Lemmon Sky Survey in
the Santa Catalina Mountains north of Tucson, and the Siding Spring Survey
near Coonabarabran, New South Wales, Australia. Website:
http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/css/
Science contact: Steve Larson, 520-621-4973, slarson at lpl.arizona.edu
Rob McNaught, rmn at murky.anu.edu.au
The cooperating surveys share a common goal - to help inventory more than 90
percent of Near Earth Objects (NEOs) that are one kilometer or larger. The
three surveys have been monitoring the Tempel 1 comet and will observe
during impact from both the northern and southern hemispheres.
€ UA's 61-inch Kuiper Telescope in the Santa Catalina Mountains
north of Tucson. Website: http://james.as.arizona.edu/~psmith/61inch/
Science contact: Carl Hergenrother, 520-621-9690,
chergen at pirl.lpl.arizona.edu
The comet will be about 20 degrees above the horizon, and sets about two
hours after impact. With a 61-inch telescope, Hergenrother plans to observe
as many as 50 other comets as well as Tempel 1 from July 2 through July 5.
€ Spacewatch on Kitt Peak, Ariz. Website:
http://spacewatch.lpl.arizona.edu/
Science contacts: Spacewatch Director Robert McMillan, 520-621-6968,
bob at lpl.arizona.edu
James Scotti, 520-621-2717, jscotti at lpl.arizona.edu
McMillan and Scotti have made no specific plans for watching comet Tempel 1
during Deep Impact because the comet is so low in the sky, although Scotti
said he may try for some before-and-after impact images of Tempel 1. The
25-year-old Spacewatch project is the pioneering comet-and-asteroid survey,
and another source of top comet and asteroid experts.
€ Campus Station 21-inch telescope, adjacent to the astronomy
department buildings on the UA campus. Website:
http://www.as.arizona.edu:8080/Astro/department/res_facil/opt_tele.html
Science contacts: Steward Observatory associate astronomer Thomas Fleming,
520-621-5049, tfleming at as.arizona.edu
UA astronomy major Joshua V. Nelson, jvnelson at email.arizona.edu
Fleming and Nelson photographed the comet with Steward Observatory's 21-inch
telescope at Campus Station on June 8, using a light-pollution reduction
filter to cut out some of the street light pollution. They'll use the same
setup to observe the comet on encounter night, starting at 10 p.m.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Tempel 1 is named after Ernst Wilhelm Leberecht Tempel, who discovered the
comet on April 3, 1867, in Marseilles, France. The comet is now on a
south-southeast course through constellation Virgo. It is about 40 times
dimmer than is visible to the unaided eye, but could brighten enough after
impact to be seen through binoculars, astronomers say. However, they add, it
could take minutes to hours, even days before the comet fully brightens, and
there¹s no guarantee that Earth-based telescopes will even see the immediate
impact flash.
Flandrau Science Center will open its observatory special hours Sunday,
June 3, through Saturday, June 9. Because comet Tempel 1 will be so faint
and low in the Arizona sky during its collision with the probe at 11 p.m.
Sunday night, the comet will be difficult to find in large amateur
telescopes from light polluted city locations. For stargazers who want to
try Sunday night, Flandrau will open its 16-inch telescope from 7:30 p.m.
until midnight, for real time video imaging and for direct viewing if the
comet is bright enough.
The best nights to view the comet from Flandrau's 16-inch telescope may be
Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday nights after impact. The telescope will be
open for the public from 7:30 p.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Saturday, July
4 - 9. Flandrau's 16-inch telescope is the only free public telescope open
on a regular basis in the state of Arizona. Normal telescope hours are 7
p.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Wednesday, weather permitting. For more
information, visit Flandrau's Web page at http://www.flandrau.org and call
the Flandrau Astronomy News line at 520-621-4310.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Media Contacts
Lori Stiles, UA 520-626-4402 lstiles at u.arizona.edu
Virginia Pasek, LPL Public Events 520-621-9692 pop at LPL.arizona.edu
Mike Terenzoni, Flandrau 520-621-3646 terenzoni at email.arizona.edu
Doug Isbell, NOAO 520-318-8230 disbell at noao.edu
Related Web sites:
Deep Impact - http://deepimpact.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.html
UA Lunar & Planetary Lab - http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/
UA Steward Observatory - http://www.as.arizona.edu/
LPL Public Events Program - http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/pop/
Flandrau Science Center - http://www.flandrau.org/
Observatory Web sites:
Arizona Radio Observatory, 12m - http://kp12m.as.arizona.edu/
6.5-m MMT Observatory - http://www.mmto.org/
Kitt Peak National Observatory - http://www.noao.edu/kpno/
Catalina Sky Survey - http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/css/
Kuiper 61-inch - http://james.as.arizona.edu/~psmith/61inch/
Spacewatch - http://spacewatch.lpl.arizona.edu/
21-inch Campus Station -
http://www.as.arizona.edu:8080/Astro/department/res_facil/opt_tele.html
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