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Post Info TOPIC: Comet 9/P Tempel 1
Anonymous

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RE: Comet 9/P Tempel 1
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No one really knows what will happen when a probe from NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft collides with the comet Tempel 1 in the early morning hours of July 4.
But if anyone can picture the spacecraft's journey from its Cape Canaveral launch in January to its possibly brilliant demise, it is Cornell University alumnus Dan Maas '02.
Thanks to meticulous research and hours of conversations with mission engineers and scientists, Maas can envision every detail -- from the precise structure of the spacecraft to the celestial bodies its cameras will capture along the way.

Maas' creativity and skill have resulted in two Deep Impact animations for NASA and its Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Maas, founder of Maas Digital in Ithaca, was hired to create the computerized animations on the strength of the widely heralded videos he developed for NASA's Mars rover missions.
But Deep Impact came with a new set of challenges...
"Aside from the launch it was quite different. On Mars, you're dealing with a terrestrial landscape setting. Deep Impact spends 99 percent of its life just floating out there in interplanetary space. It's hard to give a good sense of motion because the distances are so great." - Dan Maas.



He solved the problem by shifting camera angles and speeding up the timeline. But aside from the quicker pace, the animation is true to the mission.
As far as what actually will happen in the moments after Deep Impact's probe barrels into Tempel 1 on July Fourth ... chances are, Maas will be watching the NASA images at the Space Sciences Building with the same sense of anticipation as the mission planners.
"I'm a space nut. I have been since I was very young. I will try my best to be there."- Dan Maas

http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/117658main_preimpact-516.jpg
Dan Maas '02 created HDTV animation to show a conceptualized view of Deep Impact's upcoming July 4 collision with comet Tempel 1.

+ Short version - Deep Impact encounter (4 MB)
+ Long version: Deep Impact encounter (7 MB)


The animation shows a conceptualized view of Deep Impact's encounter with comet Tempel 1.
Approximately 24 hours before impact, the flyby spacecraft releases the impactor into the comet's path. The impactor uses control software and thrusters to guide itself towards the nucleus of the comet. Using optical measurements, the impactor's AutoNav software will steer itself to the brightest object in its line of sight, the Sun-facing side of Tempel 1's nucleus.

During its final moments, the impactor will take the closet images of comet's surface ever. The kinetic energy that will be released by the collision is estimated to be the equivalent of nearly 5 tons of TNT. However, this will only change the comet's velocity by about 0.0001 millimetres per second.
The collision will not appreciably modify the orbital path of Tempel 1, which poses no threat to Earth now or in the foreseeable future.

The resulting collision between comet and impactor will likely punch a crater, anywhere from the size of a Sport Utility Vehicle to a football stadium, into the comet's nucleus.
Before, during and after impact, the flyby spacecraft will be observing events from a safe distance, imaging the crater formation and resulting ejecta.
The flyby will then turn away to protect itself from possible damage from the ejecta.

source


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Blobrana


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For the first time, scientists have processed images from NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft and clearly seen the solid body, or nucleus, of the comet through the vast cloud of dust and gas that surrounds it.
The new images provide important information about the mission's target: the "heart" of comet Tempel 1.

The images were taken at the end of May with the spacecraft's medium resolution camera, at a distance of some 20 million miles from the comet. Unprocessed, the images are dominated by the comet's huge cloud of dust and gas, which scientists call the coma. However, scientists used a neat photometric trick to isolate the relatively small (5km by 14km) nucleus from the comet's coma, or atmosphere.
The much larger, but less dense atmosphere was mathematically identified and then subtracted from the original images leaving images of the nucleus, the bright point in the centre of the coma.
"Its exciting to see the nucleus pop out from the coma. And being able to distinguish the nucleus in these images helps us to better understand the rotational axis of the comet's nucleus, which is helpful for targeting this elongated body." - Michael A'Hearn, University of Maryland astronomer, leader of the Deep Impact mission.

"This is an important milestone for the Deep Impact team. From here on in we just watch the nucleus grow and grow and become brighter and bigger as the spacecraft closes in on the comet. We detected the nucleus a lot sooner than expected, but now we'll be watching the nucleus all the way to impact!" - Carey Lisse, member of the Deep Impact team and leader of the effort to extract views of the nucleus from the spacecraft images.


A false colour image of the comet, taken on 30 May 2005, is shown in the upper left. To its right is a mathematical model of the comet's atmosphere. The bottom left image is the difference between the two upper images and shows the nucleus. In the bottom right a trace through the centre of the comet shows the brightness of the nucleus. In these images North is approximately up and East is to the left. The direction to the Sun is towards the upper left hand corner. The picture is about 100,000 miles across.

As illustrated in the figure, Deep Impact images taken on May 29-31 contain a well-formed coma with a detectable point source at the position of the brightest pixel. The brightness of the nucleus as determined from these images was close to that predicted from earlier observations with the Hubble and Spitzer space-telescopes and observations from large telescopes on the ground.
At present, the nucleus contributes about 20 percent of the total brightness near the centre of the comet.

"The early detection of the nucleus in these images helps us to set the final exposure times for our encounter observations. Next we need to determine, using additional nucleus detections, how the comet is rotating in space, so we can figure out what part we will hit on July 4th." - Michael Belton, deputy principal investigator for the Deep Impact Mission.

5 - 4 - 3 - 2 - 1 - IMPACT

Deep Impact -- which consists of a sub-compact-car-sized flyby spacecraft and a five-sided impactor spacecraft about the size of a washing machine -- carries four instruments. The flyby spacecraft carries two imaging instruments, the medium resolution imager and the high resolution imager, plus an infrared spectrometer that uses the same telescope as the high-resolution imager. The impactor carries a single imager.
Built to science team specifications by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., the three imaging instruments are essentially digital cameras connected to telescopes.
They record images and data before, during, and after impact.
At the beginning of July, after a voyage of some 428 million kilometres, the joined spacecraft will reach comet Tempel 1. The spacecraft will approach the comet and collect images and spectra of it.
Then, some 24 hours before the 7 UTC July 4th impact, the flyby spacecraft will launch the impactor into the path of the onrushing comet. Like a copper penny pitched up into the air just in front of a speeding tractor-trailer truck, the 370 Kg impactor will be run down by the comet, colliding with the nucleus at an impact speed of some 37,000 kilometres per hour.

A'Hearn and his fellow mission scientists expect the impact to create a crater several hundred feet in size; ejecting ice, dust and gas from the crater and revealing pristine material beneath. The impact will have no significant affect on the orbit of Tempel 1, which poses no threat to earth.
Nearby, Deep Impact's 'flyby' spacecraft will use its medium and high resolution imagers and infrared spectrometer to collect and send back to Earth pictures and data of the event. In addition, the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes, the Chandra X-ray Observatory, and large and small telescopes on Earth also will observe the impact and its aftermath.

The University of Maryland, College Park, conducts the overall mission management for Deep Impact, which is a Discovery class NASA program. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) handles project management for the Deep Impact mission. The spacecraft was built for NASA by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corporation, Boulder, Colorado.

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Blobrana


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RE: Comet 9/P Tempel 1
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This image is a compilation of 4 images that were taken on June 13, 2005, through the clear filter of the Medium Resolution Imager (MRI) camera.

The spacecraft was 18,675,137.9 km (11,604,190 miles) away from comet Tempel 1, and the Sun is located to the right of the image.


Expand (59.1 KB)
Image credit: NASA/JPL

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Blobrana


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The Comet Tempel 1 impact will occur on July 4 05:52 UTC +/- 3minutes.
The comet will be near Spica.


Position(2000): RA 13h38m, Dec -09:35

The composition of Tempel 1 is not known, but, it is expected that the period of brightening will be short , and visible with amateur scopes.

The size of the ejecta cloud is another known , so, it is worth having a look at the comet on the night following the impact.


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Blobrana


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Tomorrow will be the earliest sunrise of the year.

Comet 9/P Tempel 1 is in the constellation Virgo .
At magnitude 9 it is within reach of most telescopes. In small scope, it is dim, small, and has a slight concentration toward the core.
Now is a good time to start tracking the target of Deep Impact.
Locator charts are will be posted HERE.






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