My version:

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hmmm website stopped updating with images.

They are proberbly asleep, or keeping them back for the news conference. It's 4:16 am at JPL.
Also the spacecraft isn't sending the pictures down in the order expected.

The broad end of the nucleus seems to be facing Stardust in the photos. I think that this means that the plan to take a detailed photo the Deep Impact crater just before closest approach has succeeded.

On the TV coverage I saw someone pick up the comet model and point to the fat end of the nucleus. The bearded project scientist responsible for determining the rotation of the comet then vigourously nodded his head in agreement. This is encouraging.

I tried to make crossed-eye stereogram with second and last pictures (after rotation/rescaling/sharpening processings):
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http://www.cosmicdiary.org/blogs/nasa/franck_marchis/?p=1004

Do we know if the rotational phase seen by Stardust matched any seen by Deep Impact's HRI instrument during approach? Since the latter is a much higher res instrument, it actually picked up a good bit of rotation on the way in, as can be seen here.

For fun I tried matching one of the earlier HRI frames to the first good Stardust image. Looks like a slightly earlier snapshot than I picked would make a better fit, bit it was at too low a resolution. HRI image magnified some 200 % and rotated to "fit". Some vaguely similar albedo patterns there.

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My impression based on your animation is that the HRI image should be rotated 90 degrees clockwise to match the new view.

Phil

I rotated it slightly over 70 degrees clockwise. Close but no cigar?

No, I mean the comparison as you presented it just above, still needs a 90 clockwise rotation. The bright spot on the right of your HRI image is the bottom point of the Stardust image. If you watch your animation zoomed in, you can see how the motion carries that bright spot down to the bottom of the nucleus, while the area that will become the one you're trying to match rotates into view.

Phil

Multiple new images, much closer to the comet.

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/stardust/st.../n30029te01.jpg
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/stardust/st.../n30031te01.jpg
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/stardust/st.../n30032te01.jpg

They're beautiful - utterly beautiful - I wasn't expecting the camera to perform quite so well.

crater identification in 3, 2, 1....

Just catching up with this 'cos I've been at work all day until now, but wow, what an achievement. And well done Doug for all your hard work on this, too.

Amazing times we live in. Amazing times...

My best guess for the impact site (based on looking at the Deep Impact images).

Wow! I had honestly been expecting images much less clear than these. Looks like this mission will pay off nicely.

I'm impressed at the image quality too.
A couple closer images.

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/stardust/st.../n30033te01.jpg
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/stardust/st.../n30034te01.jpg

That crater is in the DI approach images, so it can't be it.

You're right, I got my orientation of the surface features wrong. It should be somewhere to the left of the circular crater.

A bit of processing... some new territory - now if we can just look round the corner!

Phil

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I'm also very pleasantly surprised by the images. Some of the early ones had what appears to be motion blur (dust impacts?) and varying exposure, but this is awesome quality! Kudos to the whole team.

Yahoo!

Phil

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I think the identification of the DI crater from Hungry4Info was correct

It's the small white spot below the large crater, right?

My identification was incorrect. The crater will be somewhere inbetween the two neatly defined circular ones.

According to the NASA site (as of right now), that last pic was taken from a distance of 946.05 trillion kilometers. That's quite a zoom lens they've got there.

(what's a factor of 10^12 between friends?)

Phil

Not sure 100% but can it be that one:
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Rotated the Deep Impact image to be close to the Stardust orientation. I think...

WOW!! These images are far, far better than I was expecting.

Based on the DI 'first flash' image I think the crater might be approximately where the red arrow points but I'm not sure - and I can't identify anything that is obviously a new crater [EDIT: Probably a bit more to the right]:

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Bright spot spoiler? - it was there before...

Phil

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Stardust on the left, Deep Impact on the right, with the "official" impact site arrowed. I sure don't see the new crater...

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John

I think I can see KrisK's and Bjorn's impact candidates in the pre-impact Deep Impact image.

I've done a 'blink comparator' overlay job and I can't see anything that looks like a new feature. Some things seem to have disappeared, but nothing formed. Is it all either eroded away or buried under ejecta?

Phil

With a porous surface, and a dense impactor, I wouldn't be surprised if the comet more or less swalled the impactor without much of a crater.

So the original impact plume from Deep Impact was too big and bright to see surface detail and yet the crater left behind is perhaps too small to even resolve? That's an interesting result!

The instant science is just a-poppin' here! One thing's for sure, we're all guaranteed tenure.

Phil

Actually I was just trying to guess from the DI image approximately where the crater might be without actually trying to identify it in the new images so this is normal. One thing now seems certain though: Any crater from the DI impact isn't big (actually it occurs to me if there might possibly be no identifiable new crater, possibly due to a lot of dust?).

Phil mentions he's seen things have dissapeared. The crater may have eroded away over the past few years.

But why wouldn't other craters/features seen in the Deep Impact images have eroded also?

weird

Regardless of how visible the DI crater is, I'm very impressed with how well the predicted flyby geometry matches the images. It looks like they timed the flyby flawlessly. Despite the pre-flyby handwringing that they might have targeted the incorrect peak in the rotation light curve, it looks like they chose correctly!

Disappeared or invisible due to low phase angle?

Fascinating images- much better than expected. Here's a processed version of the closest shot available at the moment.
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I'm wondering about the phase angle too. I was ready to declare an identification of the crater based on Phil's enhancement of this earlier image (see dark circularish ring inside my white circle):
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But that dark ring seems to be invisible in the closer image. Could that be due to the change in viewing geometry?

More pics.
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/stardust/st.../n30035te01.jpg
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/stardust/st.../n30036te01.jpg
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/stardust/st.../n30037te01.jpg
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/stardust/st.../n30039te01.jpg
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/stardust/st.../n30040te01.jpg
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/stardust/st.../n30041te01.jpg
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/stardust/st.../n30042te01.jpg

Think of a sand dune.

Put a foot-print in it.

Following day...sand dune's still there...but the foot print isn't.

Is there a need to link to every image? They can all be easily seen here http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/stardust...ion1/index.html

Yeah, no crater... but maybe it caused the obliteration of the dark spot just above the arrow point in the DI image?

Great images! I expected the crater to be much bigger! Now we can't even find it..

Absolutely amazing pictures - I was expecting less quality than the DI pics, but these are comparable if not better.

I'm amazed that the crater isn't very obvious considering the material plume the impactor kicked out. That's 370kg's of copper travelling at around 10km/second.

Apparently a crater in the order of 100m in diameter was envisaged. The surface obviously absorbs an impactor much more than expected.

Simply amazing work on the part of the team to achieve this sort of targeting and imaging.

What pathetic humans we are, we can't even make a lasting impact on a measly comet...

Looking at Emily's animation, it looks like I got the geometry in post #107 about right after all.

The "EPOXI mission" scientists seem to be just as confused as the rest of us:

"Using the composite image from Deep Impact and cropping, rotating, brightening 30036 from SD-N...Where's the crater??."

http://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?stor...726&theater

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=499...ter#!/EPOXI

To see the link you need first to log on using FACEBOOK. I have proven that any account will do.