Posted by Davin Flateau on 1 Jul 2005 at 10:17 pm.
Filed under Astronomy, Exploration Place.
Welcome to the Stars Over Kansas Deep Impact Guide to Comet Crash Happiness brought to you by… the good folks at Newton’s Third Law: “Equal and opposite reactions for 14 billion years”… and Mathematics: “See? It’s Good for Something!”
The Deep Impact spacecraft is headed for a cosmic collision with a comet on Sunday night (early Monday morning). There are so many web resources out there with so much detail on the event, we’re going to break it down for you with a list of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ).
What’s happening again?
The NASA Deep Impact Spacecraft is purposely crashing part of itself (an 820-pound vehicle called the Impactor) into Comet Tempel 1. The 23,000 mph impact will hopefully stir up layers of rock, dust and ice, so that the main probe can fly by and take images that reveal what the subsurface is made of. Also, from the size and shape of the impact crater, astronomers can tell more about the makeup of the comet. No one knows exactly what kind of crater the Impactor will form, but estimates say that it might be as large as a football stadium. The impact is very tiny compared to the size of the comet itself (8.7 by 2.5 miles), so don’t worry about it doing anything major to the comet or its motion. Many other spacecraft and telescopes on and off the Earth will be trained on the event. Check out the mission fact sheet. You can also view animations of what scientists think will happen.
When is impact?
July 4, 12:52 a.m. Central Daylight Time.
That’s also July 4, 5:52 UT (Universal Time), July 4, 1:52 a.m. EDT (Eastern Daylight Time) and July 3, 10:52 p.m. PDT (Pacific Daylight Time).
Can I watch it on TV?
You can watch it all happen on NASA TV. Here is the Deep Impact NASA TV schedule. Coverage of the event itself wil start at 10:30pm CDT. Check your local cable listings for the exact channel. I’m sure that the 24 hour news channels (CNN, MSNBC, etc.) will have some limited coverage as well.
Where can I check for the latest images?
The latest images from the mission can always be found here. Stars Over Kansas wil also keep you updated by posting the newest images as soon as they are released. I would imagine that the NASA website will experience slowdowns as the first images are released, so refresh SOK as well to check for the newest images.
What are you doing at Exploration Place for the event? Can I go somewhere nearby?
The impact is in the early morning hours, and a holiday no less, so we won’t have a “live” event going on in the CyberDome Theater. Exploration Place will have a special showing of Stars Over Kansas in the CyberDome Theater highlighting the mission results at 2pm Tuesday-Friday July 5-8. Martin Ratcliffe, Director of Theaters and Contributing Editor to Astronomy Magazine, will give a special talk in the show with the latest images and science results. The CyberDome Theater is a state of the art digital planetarium, so you can expect to see the images blown up on our huge dome, as well as other special visualizations you can’t get on the web or on TV. Outside of the Wichita area check out a list of other museum, planetarium and observatory events around the world.
Can I see the event with my telescope?
Comet Tempel 1 is is in a good position for a decent chunk of North America. While no one knows exactly what you might see, I wouldn’t pass up the opportunity to see such a unique event! Sky and Telescope has an excellent guide to observing the event with a telescope. They provide a good summary of the event:
What will we see? No one knows. There may or may not be a brief flash detectable in telescopes. But the expanding debris cloud, and perhaps continued venting of gas from the fresh crater, are likely to increase the comet’s overall brightness for hours, days, or possibly weeks. Reports that it will become visible to the naked eye, however, are probably overblown.
Strike up the 1812 Overture and let the fireworks begin!
