LCROSS PR SNAFU!

Well, glad my time wasn't spent behind the EP trying to see a plume that didn't even show up from a few miles above the moon's surface. Whether the "mission" was a success or not, the public certainly was not drawn in by this one. I will be curious to see what the scrambling will be to reignite public interest. Put on a positive face and go forth amid the disappointed masses. Good luck.

Was hoping that there would be a televised view from some quality earth-bound scope. Too much to ask I guess.

Jud

My own disappointment at being clouded out vaporized in a spectacular explosion of, well, absolutely nothing!

Would you rather have looked and not seen anything than have not been alerted and missed a good show? We didn't know if we'd see anything when the fragments of Comet SL slammed into Jupiter, but we watched. In that case we were rewarded. In this case some people thought we might have a chance to see the plume resulting from the impact. They happened to be wrong - so what? We didn't have much of a knowledge base to draw on.

It got people interested in the search for water and probably got quite a few folks out doing a little lunar observing.

Clear skies, Alan

Well I had great seeing and transparency for the event. And even though well into daylight at the East Coast, and not seeing any plume, I did learn how increadibly nice just after daylight observing of the Moon can be when you get the exit pupil down. After no-joy looking for the plume I tunred to nearby crater Moretus and was treated to astounding levels of details with the rock steady seeing :-)

Not only was I clouded over until just before the impact, but we had snow and the temperature was quite uncomfortable. I was surprised to see that the weather channels hour by hour forecast turned out to be quite accurate. At about 5:00 I looked out of the patio door and lo and behold the sky had cleared. However I did not relish the idea of humping either my 10" or 20" through the snow and setting it up. After viewing the televised event I was certainly glad that I hadn't.

It is certainly apparent that man's puny attempts at worlds in collision had little "impact". Mindless aggregates of brutish matter do a far better job of carving voluminous craters and raising plumes of streaming matter. We had better get back to practicing being masters of the universe. (squeak!)

Maybe we should have tossed in one of those surplus suitcase nukes to make a bit more of a splash.

DanL