This is more or less consistent with the result from the Lunar Prospector impact. No visible plume there either although a small one was expected. One difference so far is the detection of the sodium line mentioned at the press conference. They did not see even that after the Prospector impact.

http://www.ae.utexas.edu/research/cfpl/lun...discussion.html

The truth surfaces....

""There's not going to be these grand, spectacular images of ejecta flying, kind of what you've seen in animations or cartoons," LCROSS principal investigator Tony Colaprete told reporters Thursday. "It's going to be more of a muted shimmer of light, but that muted shimmer of light contains all the information we need to answer our questions."


I wonder what % of people watching knew about that statement........I did not.

I think the press conference was premature, people were tired and the data was too tentative, to the point that there was an initial statement that they weren't going to state if there was water found, what the reporters were likely to be there to hear about.
The MIR flash detection image was intriguing, and the adaptive optics image from Palomar was amazing. the Apache point telescopic video was reasonably good quality, but the MMT enlarged view was so awful it shouldn't have been shown. Unfortunately the Ranger style spacecraft image sequences were not shown! Too many squiggly lines were dwelt upon to be appropriate to a non technical audience.
Colaprete said in response to a question 'I see something in the spectrometer data but I can't say anything more than that', then he apparently vacillated in the awareness he had of that data, finishing an exchange of questions thus:
Q:"Will you know later this afternoon...if there's water or ice?" A:"...I probably will but I'm not gonna tell you."
He (presumably unintentionally) looked like he was coyly BSing the press, something you don't want to do. A day of rest and analysis and image preparation would have worked wonders. As it is the info barely crept above the 'noise' in discussions of the event in the popular media. It's hard enough to get people interested in the Moon and gathering reporters prematurely to tell them the big news isn't forthcoming doesn't help.
I am glad to see Ames get more cool missions. I'm sure that the optimum means of getting information out in the aftermath of a successful mission, for which they can be proud, will evolve with experience. The data from various sources will eventually speak for itself and provide a composite view of this rather dramatic experiment.

I remember Deep Impact and was expecting something similar. The observing craft must have been much farther away in this case.

If they did enough analysis to determine they got a sodium signal, why not water? Would that indicate any water signal they might tease out of the data will be weak at best?

Lack of water/ice is consistent with Kaguya results. The LRO press kit mentioned that in addition to the water theory, the decreased neutron flux seen by Clementine (and I gather Chandrayaan-1) near the poles could also be explained by hydrogen deposited from solar wind, being more stable and able to accumulate in the cold polar regions. So is that now the leading theory?

I was happy with the press conference. I was happy seeing the squiggly lines even though I don't know what they mean. Being told that they were there, that they contained plenty of information to be teased out over time, was good enough for me. I do not wish to be robbed of such small pleasures by those who would prefer nothing rather than a brief, incomplete story. I'm happy with the preview and my appetite is whetted for the main course when it comes.

I suggest that those who are not happy with incomplete information wait two weeks before reading another story about the mission. Better yet, wait for the release of the preliminary papers in December.

Did anybody happen to get any screen caps from the NASA TV briefing this morning? In particular I'm looking for this one:

If I recall correctly, the one shown on NASA TV had a more pixelated view of the one in the lower right corner instead of the blobby upsampled version they posted on their website, so that you could tell how the flash showed up in several pixels.

After all the pre-flight hoopla, the public need to be given something. CNN has seemingly dropped all mention of the mission because they have nothing to show. At the press conference it was mentioned that the new crater created by the Centaur was seen. Could a picture of the new crater at least be released to the waiting media?

When they say it "was seen," it was just one pixel. So probably not what CNN really wanted.

Still, they could have done a much better job getting their images to the media. Ames doesn't have JPL's polish when it comes to putting out graphics for media. Right now actually I'm trying to collect all the useful images I can for posting in a more easy-to-browse format, but it'll be too late to help anybody who's got a news deadline today.

--Emily

Yes, I remember seen 3 pixels verticaly but very clear, not blobby.

Someone in a German forum captured several pics. Also this one you're looking for.

From HardOCP


From Wired.com


from an IT forum


Comments at Space.com


Toms Hardware


Nothing wrong with LCROSS. Something quite clearly wrong with the expectations put out there before it happened.

Hmmmmm been out all day, just got in and been catching up on events, Had a feeling we might get this reaction if we didn't see lots of "fireworks" lol.

You are the man, Tman!

Guilty