October 9, 2009 on 7:19 pm | In Moon, Satellites, Uncategorized | Comments Off

Well, 4 of us, Frank Garner, Dan Schmitt, Jon Wood (Yes Jon!!) and I, setup scopes this mornig early to image the LCROSS impact. However at 5:00am we were covered with a blanket of clouds. Eventually they went away, but just about 5 minuts before the impact, a thin blanket of clouds moved in. The first avi 1/2 minute after the impact was reasonable but the others became worse as time went on.  The processed images did not look different than the once I took two days ago for the trial run, except the quality was a lot worse.
Shown here is an animated sequence covering a period of 5 minutes.  From Two minutes prior, to 3 minutes after the impact.  The only change in the images is the level of overexposure caused by the density of the clouds moving through.  The target area is just inside the crater and a little left of the overexposed area on the left. (Click the thumbnail to activate the animation).  Don’t forget to look at the movie I made of this event on YouTube.

  MoonACOMP-09-10-09-07-29-22-5Minutes.gif   
 
 

Watching NASA afterwards, it looked like we did not miss anything, because all visible observations they showed did not show a plume either.  I wish NASA would not have made such a hipe out of the LCROSS mission and get all those kids involved in observing. It must be a let down for them not to have seen a plume.

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