Here's my Light Cup Hot Tip on observing Deep Impact this July 3rd, your chance to catch this once in a life time event. My 4-inch TV-102 Light Cup is going to be at 8000 ft. elev. just to get a front-row seat to the big bang ;-).
Seeing a magnitude 10 comet is similar to seeing small magnitude 10 galaxy. So use your DSO skills and tricks if you're using small telescope. Hopefully, we'll all see the so called predicted
brightening. Driven mount ;-) will prove its worth as my Light Cup and I planned to start ahead of the 11pm event just in case there's a slight error in the predicted time of impact. Get thee to a fairly dark sky. I've already tried the comet under my orange/gray sky of NELM 3.5 and it was a *no show* in my 4-incher :-(. Make sure you have a good finder chart.
Date of impact: July 3rd 2005
Time of impact: 10:52pm Pacific time. Start watching early!
Comet magnitude: 9.3, predicted to brighten to magnitude 6!
S&T Guide:
http://skyandtelescope.com/observing/highlights/article_1522_1.asp
Charts:
http://www.griffithobs.org/comettempel.html
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news145.html
Telescope Size:
http://deepimpact.umd.edu/amateur/beginner/sec5.shtml
Sketch of how comet look like back in May
http://deepimpact.umd.edu/amateur/view_gallery.cfm?obsnID=1322
How deep a crater:
http://www.planetary.org/deepimpact/di_crater.html
NASA FAQs:
http://deepimpact.jpl.nasa.gov/faq.html
http://deepimpact.jpl.nasa.gov/faq1.html
http://deepimpact.jpl.nasa.gov/faq2.html
http://deepimpact.jpl.nasa.gov/faq3.html
http://deepimpact.jpl.nasa.gov/faq4.html
http://deepimpact.jpl.nasa.gov/faq5.html
Who discovered the comet?
http://deepimpact.jpl.nasa.gov/science/tempel1-discoverer.html
Enjoy and best of the best luck and a Vue-ing impact ;-).
Ron B[ee]
Seeing a magnitude 10 comet is similar to seeing small magnitude 10 galaxy. So use your DSO skills and tricks if you're using small telescope. Hopefully, we'll all see the so called predicted
brightening. Driven mount ;-) will prove its worth as my Light Cup and I planned to start ahead of the 11pm event just in case there's a slight error in the predicted time of impact. Get thee to a fairly dark sky. I've already tried the comet under my orange/gray sky of NELM 3.5 and it was a *no show* in my 4-incher :-(. Make sure you have a good finder chart.
Date of impact: July 3rd 2005
Time of impact: 10:52pm Pacific time. Start watching early!
Comet magnitude: 9.3, predicted to brighten to magnitude 6!
S&T Guide:
http://skyandtelescope.com/observing/highlights/article_1522_1.asp
Charts:
http://www.griffithobs.org/comettempel.html
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news145.html
Telescope Size:
http://deepimpact.umd.edu/amateur/beginner/sec5.shtml
Sketch of how comet look like back in May
http://deepimpact.umd.edu/amateur/view_gallery.cfm?obsnID=1322
How deep a crater:
http://www.planetary.org/deepimpact/di_crater.html
NASA FAQs:
http://deepimpact.jpl.nasa.gov/faq.html
http://deepimpact.jpl.nasa.gov/faq1.html
http://deepimpact.jpl.nasa.gov/faq2.html
http://deepimpact.jpl.nasa.gov/faq3.html
http://deepimpact.jpl.nasa.gov/faq4.html
http://deepimpact.jpl.nasa.gov/faq5.html
Who discovered the comet?
http://deepimpact.jpl.nasa.gov/science/tempel1-discoverer.html
Enjoy and best of the best luck and a Vue-ing impact ;-).
Ron B[ee]
