Photographing a crashing satellite

greenpea

Tonight (Saturday, September 2, 2006) at 10:41 PM PDT the European satellite, SMART-1 will crash into the moon traveling at nearly 4,500 miles per hour. Although the satellite is suppose crash on a portion of the moon that will be dark, it may be possible to see the cloud of debris that it will rise as high as 12 miles above the moon.

Now I don’t know if it is possible to get a photo of this unless you have a good astrophotography set up (which I don’t). But I would like to put the challenge out there to anyone that’s up for it to try and capture a picture of this event. Assuming I can get my daughter to bed on time, I will be out in my yard with my telescope and my camera and my biggest lens (a slow 300mm zoom :cry). I doubt I will capture anything, but if anyone else is going to make an attempt at photographing this, please post your pictures!

Here is a news article about the event
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/283587_moon02.html
Here is the European Space Agency’s web site talking about the event
http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/SMART-1/index.html

wxwax

Cool! I know we have a couple of members who do this sort of thing, dunno if they'll catch this thread in time tho.

greenpea

wxwax wrote:

Cool! I know we have a couple of members who do this sort of thing, dunno if they'll catch this thread in time tho.

Yah, this was kind of a last minute idea. But I'm hoping someone with the equiptment might give it a try.

JamieC

Overcast here in Ottawa.. and will be for the next few days Maybe I can go for a looooooong drive to get to better weather!

jamie

greenpea

What I saw...
Sorry, no pictures from me. Although had I been better set up with my camera I might have actually got a picture of what I saw, because it was totally visible via the naked eye.

I saw was a black cloud over the moon covering almost a quarter of the moon at one point but it disappeared after a few minutes. I’m assuming that was the dust cloud left from the impact (definately not a cloud). I did not see a flash or anything like that even I had my telescope pointed at the moon for 30+ minutes (you have to stop looking every now and then to take a sip from your beer).

Anyone get any cool pictures? Anyone?

Angelo

well I tried but saw no evidence of the impact

but I did snap this:

greenpea

then again, maybe I saw nothing...
After reading a couple of the articles online, it looks like the ony thing that there was to see was a very very very faint flash that you could only see with a very very very big telescope. My group and I did see what we thought was a black cloud of dust over the moon, but no one else is talking about a dust cloud.

Nice picture Angelo. Looks like you had a far more scenic viewing location than me.

JamieC

Hey Greanpeas... thanks for the report. I haven't heard anything from astronomy friends.

Jamie

wxwax

greenpea wrote:

Sorry, no pictures from me. Although had I been better set up with my camera I might have actually got a picture of what I saw, because it was totally visible via the naked eye.

I saw was a black cloud over the moon covering almost a quarter of the moon at one point but it disappeared after a few minutes. I’m assuming that was the dust cloud left from the impact (definately not a cloud). I did not see a flash or anything like that even I had my telescope pointed at the moon for 30+ minutes (you have to stop looking every now and then to take a sip from your beer).

Anyone get any cool pictures? Anyone?

Pics of the impact from the European Space Agency.

ajgauthier

hiya - I see someone's already posted the infrared pics --- those were taken at Mauna Kea in their 2m (I believe).

I saw this thread last night, but there wasn't any way that anyone with a small telescope would see it. It wouldn't be visible via naked eye --- some sites say anything under a 1m mirror is useless. The flash wouldn't be that bright and would last only milliseconds.

The crater was estimated to only be about 15-30 feet, and elongated in a linear path. Also, not very "deep" per say, it wouldn't throw out a lot of ejecta. They had it coming in like an airplane landing...low trajectory.

I hate that space.com has an illustrated version of the impact - with all this gorgeous hot ejecta! Wouldn't happen on the moon my friends...I hate it when sites like that spread misconceptions!

So greenpea, I don't think you really saw a cloud of dark dust spreading over an area almost 1/4 the size of the moon. There wouldn't be that much dust/ejecta kicked up and it wouldn't spread like that and dissapate -- remember, no atmosphere/wind on the moon. However, in another day or two you can coincide your observations to when it actually impacted the moon (5:42 UT) and look online for other accounts of what others saw.

Adrienne

greenpea

ajgauthier wrote:

So greenpea, I don't think you really saw a cloud of dark dust spreading over an area almost 1/4 the size of the moon. There wouldn't be that much dust/ejecta kicked up and it wouldn't spread like that and dissapate -- remember, no atmosphere/wind on the moon. However, in another day or two you can coincide your observations to when it actually impacted the moon (5:42 UT) and look online for other accounts of what others saw.

Adrienne

Yah, I'm not sure what it was that we saw. We had a 4" refractor, so we obviously didn't see the flash, but 5 or 10 minutes after the collision was suppose to happen, there was what looked like a black cloudy like area on the moon. It was a lot darker than what you would expect to see if the moon passed behind a cloud, and looking up at the moon with the naked eye we could see a portion of it get darker for a minute or so.

Then again it, I suppose it could have just been dark smoke in the air (someone with a late night back yard BBQ).

Maybe we were all just trying too hard to see something.

Nikolai

Sid,

wxwax wrote:

Pics of the impact from the European Space Agency.

I did a diff in PS between Before and After frames. I can't tel the difference from the usual noise factor (and the celestial movement). The circle is about the blast radius in the middle shot.



I tend to agree with those who say that you need to be there at the very precise moment and have a HUGE optics to be able see it...

ajgauthier

more info...
hi all - I was waiting to post until I could find more info.

greenpea - I've confirmed with a colleague of mine (at the Lunar and Planetary Lab here) that you did not see any sort of 'dark dust cloud' over part of the Moon due to the SMART-1 impact.

In fact...the ejecta from the impact is just surface dust. What does the surface of the Moon do? It reflects sunlight at about 11% albedo (that's 11% of the Sun's total light gets reflected so we see the moon). So...any dust/lunar material that gets kicked up, even if high (they estimate 25km), would show as a bright spot to us on Earth, not a dark spot. What you saw was probably a real cloud blocking the moonlight, or, a group figment (it can happen!) with everyone trying really hard to see it. (Think 'Percival Lowell and canals on Mars)

Indeed - one could not have seen the flash of the impact last night to the naked eye or in a small amateur telescope (16" and under) unless they were highly skilled and had special equipment. Some research grade telescopes caught the impact (IR and radio) as well as planetary scientists trying to record the spectra of the ejecta.

If you want to see an impact - one was caught on video this past June.

Posted here:
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/13jun_lunarsporadic.htm?list2145

clear skies!
Adrienne

gus

ajgauthier wrote:

If you want to see an impact - one was caught on video this past June.

Posted here:
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/13jun_lunarsporadic.htm?list2145

clear skies!
Adrienne

Thanks for the link aj...how does it create a fireball without oxygen ?

David_S85

Old News
There's a fairly good writeup of the event with a photo of the spaceship hitting the moon's surface here.
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What? What did you expect from me anyways?
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photodoug

I saw something...

greenpea

Wow, what a let down of an event.

Think I will let someone else pick the next astronomical event to try and photograph.

David_S85

OK, I'll pick 13 April, 2029. Google that one. :yikes

ajgauthier

Apophis

David_S85 wrote:

OK, I'll pick 13 April, 2029. Google that one. :yikes

Apophis, a.k.a. Apep:
Apep was the ancient spirit of evil and destruction who dwelled in eternal darkness.

(gulp)

Adrienne

Nikolai

Thanks, David!

David_S85 wrote:

OK, I'll pick 13 April, 2029. Google that one. :yikes

At least now I know where the final scenes of "The GoldenEye" were filmed:-) : I thought it was a CGI-aided model...

flyingdutchie

gus wrote:

Thanks for the link aj...how does it create a fireball without oxygen ?

The impact of the meteorite generates heat. You see the glow of the heat.
Fire is not the only way to generate heat, if you define fire as something burning using oxygen.
The word 'fireball' may not have been chosen correctly...

A good example of oxygen-less heat is the sun.