NASA's Deep Impact Mission
Takes Aim at Comet Tempel 1 on the Fourth of July
As reported here previously ("NASA
Spacecraft on Track to Strike Comet Tempel 1 on the
Fourth of July," The Citizen Scientist,
6 May 2005), NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft is slated
to intercept and collide with Comet Tempel 1 on 4 July
2005.
According to NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the Deep Impact spacecraft
has completed its third trajectory correction, a slight
velocity change of 6-meters-per-second (13.4 mile-per-hour),
and is on target to collide with Comet Tempel 1.
The Deep
Impact web site has the latest information on the
impact, which is scheduled to occur at about 1:52 AM
Eastern Standard Time on 4 July.
Figure
1 is a view of Comet Tempel 1 (center) from Deep
Impact on 20 June 2005. The comet was 12,452,913.2 kilometers
(7,738,240 miles) away from the spacecraft when this
image was captured. According to the Deep Impact web
site, four images were merged to create this picture,
and image processing was applied to enhance the comet's
coma. A star appears to the right of the comet.
As noted in our previous
report, the Deep Impact mission offers important
opportunities for amateur astronomers. To find out more,
visit the Deep
Impact Amateur Observers' Program . This site has
Beginner
, Intermediate
and Advanced
pages. Serious amateur astronomers should go straight
to the Advanced
page. From there, they should visit the the Small
Telescope Science Program (STSP) .
The latter program is an excellent
example of amateur science being taken seriously by
the professional community. STSP is a major worldwide
collaboration of advanced amateur astronomers, private
observatories, and professional astronomers. The key
objective of STSP is to provide continuous monitoring
of Tempel 1 to complement observations made by major
telescopes.
The STSP web page lists specific objectives
for the collaboration. Also provided are detailed
observing
procedures. Even casual amateur astronomers will
find this web site of great interest.
Amateur astronomers who observe the
impact are encouraged to send
reports to The Citizen Scientist.
Forrest M. Mims III 
|
