Kaguya To Hit the Moon

Zubenel (Wes) · #1 14-09-2009, 08:46 PM

I had a call from a distant acquaintance requesting that I repair an "OLD" scope so a friend of theirs could watch the Lunar orbiter Kaguya (formerly named Selene) slam into the moon on the 10th of October. Sky and Tel are running an article saying that it may be possible to see the "flash" . Has anyone got any more information as to whether this will be possible??

Cheers Zubenel

Rob_K · #2 14-09-2009, 09:03 PM

Kaguyu impacted some months ago - think you mean LCross Zubenel. Unfortunately, impact won't be visible from Australia.

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2...rosstarget.htm

Cheers -

DavidU (Dave) · #3 14-09-2009, 09:07 PM

I think it impacted on the 10th of June.

Zubenel (Wes) · #4 14-09-2009, 09:33 PM

Thanks for the quick replies. Did any amateur see the impact on the 10th of June??
As far as the 10th of October is concerned , if it means I get a dusty scope back under the dark skies for a fur fee event it won't be all bad

Thanks
Zub

firstlight (Tony) · #5 14-09-2009, 09:42 PM

Isn't LCROSS due to hit about then?

Try this link http://lcross.arc.nasa.gov/

firstlight (Tony) · #6 14-09-2009, 10:10 PM

According to their website, the impact will occur at something like 21:00 AEST... prime viewing for Oz... bit of bad planning by the yanks... we usually miss out in anything good.

Hang on... I better check if the Moon is up at that time.

OK... if all goes to plan the impact will occur about 22:30 AEST, the Moon rises at around 22:47 AEST. NZers might see the fireworks.

Blue Skies (Jacquie) · #7 14-09-2009, 10:47 PM

The LCROSS impact is on the 9th! You definitely will miss it if you try on the 10th. Its scheduled for 11.30UT on the 9th October.

There are some detailed pages set up to give amateurs a guide to viewing it, and it is anticipate that people with a 10" may be able to video it, but as mentioned the moon will not be up at the time of impact! It looks like its being timed to benefit the Americans, and as we are on the other side of the world....
http://lcross.arc.nasa.gov/observation/amateur.htm

By the way, only one very large professional telescope, in the metre class, managed to detect a couple of pixel-widths of explosion from Kaguya. I can't remember which scope it was, but it was an Australian one, I think.

Zubenel (Wes) · #8 16-09-2009, 05:28 AM

Well , Thankyou all for the info. That pretty much put the last nail in the coffin

Interesting but...................

mithrandir (Andrew) · #9 16-09-2009, 08:17 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Blue Skies

By the way, only one very large professional telescope, in the metre class, managed to detect a couple of pixel-widths of explosion from Kaguya. I can't remember which scope it was, but it was an Australian one, I think.

http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/~jbailey/kaguya.html

Quote:
The impact of the Japanese spacecraft Kaguya on the Moon on June 10th 2009 was successfully observed from the Anglo-Australian 3.9m Telescope at Siding Spring, NSW, Australia. The observations used the IRIS-2 infrared camera and were made through a narrow band filter centered at a wavelength of 2.3 micrometres. A series of 1 second exposures were taken with 0.6 seconds dead time between exposures (so 1.6 second cycle time).

Spanrz (Brett) · #10 16-09-2009, 12:49 PM

There's a youtube vid on it... It's last visual.