The Planetary Society Blog
By Emily Lakdawalla
Graphics from the LCROSS press briefing
Oct. 9, 2009 | 12:59 PDT | 19:59 UTC
EDIT OCT 10 2:48 PM: I just realized that the images of the impact flash from the mid-infrared camera were all released mirror-reversed, so I have corrected their orientation below. It's not incorrect for something to be rotated 180 degrees, but you can't correct a mirror-reversal by rotating an image. In order to be able to compare the views of Cabeus from the different LCROSS cameras you have to mirror-reverse the mid-infrared camera images they've been releasing, so I've done that to all three mid-infrared camera images below.
It's been a little difficult to get a hold of the graphics that they used at this morning's press briefing. First they were available in PDF format, but some images were missing, then the PDFs disappeared and were replaced with a gallery of JPEGs that was kind of difficult to browse. So I'm hereby performing a public service by posting all the important graphics I could find, and I've added some caption information as far as I know it. I also mirror-flipped one of the images that was released reversed. (It's not uncommon for quick releases of new space camera data to be accidentally released mirror-reversed; ESA did it during the Rosetta Earth flyby, and India did it with a Chandrayaan-1 image of Earth.)
I'm not sure what to expect out of the LCROSS mission in terms of more image releases. For one, I'd love to have more of the shepherd spacecraft's inbound images. The good news is that the longest we'll have to wait to see any of that data is six months; by six months from today, LCROSS is required to have delivered all of its data to the Planetary Data System.
I decided not to collect any of the ground-based observatory images, because they'll likely improve with processing and will have better stories to tell once they can add data from their spectrometers. So I'll wait for that.
So here's what I could find from LCROSS itself, put into chronological order: LCROSS shepherd spacecraft imageLCROSS snapped this image of the Moon at 10:44:45 UTC on October 9, about 50 minutes before it crashed.Credit: NASA / ARC | LCROSS shepherd spacecraft imageLCROSS snapped this photo of the south pole of the Moon at 11:20:02, about 11 minutes before the Centaur crashed and about 15 minutes before it followed.Credit: NASA / ARC | LCROSS visible camera image of impact siteLCROSS captured this image of the lunar south pole on its way into impact on October 9, 2009. It watched the Centaur upper stage crash into a permanently shadowed area of the crater Cabeus.Credit: NASA / ARC | LCROSS near-infrared camera image of impact siteLCROSS captured this image of the lunar south pole on its way into impact on October 9, 2009. It watched the Centaur upper stage crash into a permanently shadowed area of the crater Cabeus.Credit: NASA / ARC | LCROSS mid-infrared view of the lunar south poleLCROSS captured this image of the lunar south pole on its way into impact on October 9, 2009. It watched the Centaur upper stage crash into a permanently shadowed area of the crater Cabeus. This version of the image has been mirror-reversed in order to match the appearance of the visible- and near-infrared camera images.Credit: NASA / ARC / processed by Emily Lakdawalla | LCROSS view of Cabeus at moment of Centaur impactCredit: NASA / ARC | Impact flash detected by LCROSS mid-infrared camera (orientation flipped)This image presents three different zooms into the same image captured by LCROSS' mid-infrared camera just after the impact of the Centaur upper stage into the crater Cabeus on October 9, 2009 at 11:31 UTC. The flash was visible in thermal wavelengths, and was spread over several pixels in the camera image, which surprised the principal investigator. The version at lower right has been "upsampled" significantly -- in reality there were only three or four pixels across the flash area.
This version of the image has been mirror-flipped top for bottom to match the visible- and near-infrared images of the impact. Credit: NASA / ARC | LCROSS mid-infrared detection of Centaur impact flash (orientation flipped)The version of the mid-infrared impact detection shown on NASA Television was not upsampled, so it is clear how the impact flash was observed to spread across several pixels, a fact that was surprising to the project scientist. Anthony Colaprete mused that it could represent motion smear, but the frame rate of the camera was high enough to make that seem unlikely to him.
This version of the image has been mirror-flipped top for bottom to match the visible- and near-infrared images of the impact. Credit: NASA TV; courtesy klausd of raumfahrer.net | Detection of the Centaur crater in the LCROSS UV/VIS spectrometerScientists were unsure if this detection would be possible, so were gratified to detect the impact flash in the LCROSS ultraviolet and visible spectrometer.Credit: NASA / ARC | Spectrometer data from LCROSS after impactThe LCROSS visible spectrometer swept across the sunlit rim of Cabeus crater before the impact, then into darkness, whereupon the reflectance drops very sharply to a flat low. Then it swept across the impact site, where it detected a tiny "blip" from the impact. The sharp peak following that results from a known instrument artifact that had yet to be calibrated out in this early version of the data. Credit: NASA / GSFC / annotations by Emily Lakdawalla | LCROSS shepherd spacecraft imageThe LCROSS shepherd spacecraft captured this photo of Cabeus at 11:33:38 UTC, just under two minutes before its impact at 11:35:34.Credit: NASA / ARC |
Here's one other treasure that wasn't on the official website:Last image from LCROSSThis is what Emory Stagmer's computer screen looked like about an hour after the LCROSS impact. On the screen is the very last image returned from LCROSS, a fraction of a second before its impact. Stagmer is the flight software lead for the LCROSS mission and was Twittering from LCROSS mission control during the impact events. Credit: NASA / ARC / courtesy Emory Stagmer |
Also don't miss the three animations I posted earlier!
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