LCROSS en route Options

[NGC3314]

While we're waiting for Those Pictures, here are a couple of shots of LCROSS from our campus observatory last night (0221, 027 UT on 15 July). 4 minute exposures tracking expected motion from the Horizons ephemeris, within 20 degrees of the southern horizon and fighting summertime haze as well as city lights. I wanted to catch it before its inclined orbit takes it too far south, after which it spends a week or so as a predawn object. The range was about 563,000 km, and the Centaur is no bigger than a CSM/LM combination, so this is a more difficult target than spotting an Apollo enroute was. (On the other hand, nobody had CCD imagers in 1969).

[Tman]

Here a GIF animation of the Moon phase and the visibility/location of Cabeus A for "earthbound" watchers for October 09. Though, timing is bad

http://greuti.ch/astro/LCROSSimpact.gif

I tried to match this image as good as possible.

Telescope views: http://groups.google.com/group/lcross_obse...b/finders?hl=en

And wow: http://www.pbase.com/slammel/image/104360794/original

This post has been edited by Tman: Sep 13 2009, 06:00 PM