Posted on 07/01/2005 6:12:43 PM PDT by Righty_McRight
I read yesterday that the 820 lb satellite will make a crater the size of a football field on the comet that is 1/2 the size of Manhattan.
The thing about this is that the impact might be visible from earth across most of the US, and to the naked eye.
Q: how will it get the corners so square? (as an aside: why the f'k does seemingly EVERYTHING have to be measured in terms of football fields?)
why the f'k does seemingly EVERYTHING have to be measured in terms of football fields?)
Ok, it will be the size of a soccer pitch,
48 lanes of league bowling, a 100yd firing range,
or Hillery!'s butt.
I think the screaming mimes have him distracted.
You're the second person on FR that has told me that. The article I read didn't mention that but, said it would be visible through telescopes. There will be a number of serious 'scopes' on it though...The Hubble, Chandra and etc. will be viewing/recording the impact. We'll get some very good pictures. The article I read said that images of the incident would be on the internet 15 minutes after impact.
This will probably lead to some confusion. The target is about 2 AU from earth, which means that light will take about 15 minutes to arrive here after impact.
As to whether the dust cloud of the impact will be visible: the comet is magnitude 9.7 right now. The limit of naked eye visibility is mag 6. If the dust cloud is 6 or brighter, it should be visible. But this brings up the problem of light pollution. Many people rarely see stars dimmer than mag 4 or even 3 due to light pollution. If there were no light pollution then many could see the event. With light pollution, few would see it. I expect sightings will be rare in the extreme.
It will be extremely easy to find, though. Giving directions should be a snap.
Guilty! :-)
But I swear I heard that on my local radio station!
I believe you and hope that we can. RightWhale is a pretty smart guy and he gives a pretty good explanation in post #27. It may just depend on where the viewer is viewing...light pollution, etc.
Understandable.
There's nothing more aggravating than a screaming mime.
Oh, the earth will be fine.
The inhabitants?
It will be a new moon, though, which I believe would have been included in the mission parameters deliberately.
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