LCROSS Lunar Impact |
LCROSS Lunar Impact |
Oct 9 2009, 02:19 AM
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#101
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Merciless Robot Group: Admin Posts: 8784 Joined: 8-December 05 From: Los Angeles Member No.: 602 |
T minus 9 hrs. 10 min till impact. NASA TV coverage begins @ 1015 GMT (0315 PDT). Link to coverage here.
-------------------- A few will take this knowledge and use this power of a dream realized as a force for change, an impetus for further discovery to make less ancient dreams real.
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Oct 9 2009, 09:24 PM
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#102
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 1465 Joined: 9-February 04 From: Columbus OH USA Member No.: 13 |
Given that they saw sodium in the early results, this item from 1999 concerning natural impactors may be of interest:
The Moon's Sodium Tail and the Leonid Meteor Shower QUOTE Boston University astronomers announced today the discovery of an enormous tail of sodium gas stretching to great distances from the moon. The observations were made at the McDonald Observatory in Fort Davis, Texas, on nights following the Leonid meteor shower of November 1998. The tail of sodium gas was seen to distances of at least 500,000 miles from the moon, changing its appearance over three consecutive nights... Also QUOTE Sodium reflects sunlight very efficiently and so has become a standard way for space scientists to study gases that are otherwise difficult to see. ...
In trying to determine if this comet-like appearance of the moon occurred only on nights following a strong meteor shower, as happened with the Leonids, the BU team examined some earlier data taken at their site in Texas. During the previous August, similar observations were made, fortuitously on the nights following the new moon of August 21, 1998. "It was there," Dr. Smith said, "several times fainter, but with the same shapes over the same three nights spanning the new moon, just as occurred in November." Taken together, the August observations without meteors and the November observations with meteors imply that the daily flux of micrometeors that strikes the moon's surface creates an extended tail at all times; it was just so enhanced during the strong Leonid storm that it was observed rather easily. "What we do not know yet is whether the entire atmosphere of the moon is produced by meteors, or just the small component of fast sodium atoms that can escape from it," Mendillo said. -------------------- |
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