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Emily Lakdawalla

I am having issues with TwitPic this morning, so will occasionally post new images from the LCROSS camera to this blog entry.

Emily Lakdawalla

Quite a night! I set my alarm for 3:15 am in order to get up and watch LCROSS crash into the Moon.

Emily Lakdawalla

Here's the sharpest optical image shown today of the Moon, from Palomar Observatory.

Emily Lakdawalla

I am pretty sure this image shows the LCROSS impact plume and its shadow as seen from the MMT observatory in Arizona, but as Alan Boyle just pointed out, the time stamps indicate the photos were all taken before the nominal impact time.

Emily Lakdawalla

This plot just shows the aggregate radiance in ultraviolet and visible wavelengths -- all wavelengths -- seen by one of LCROSS' spectrometers after the Centaur hit the Moon.

Emily Lakdawalla

So the big drama on LCROSS is over.

Emily Lakdawalla

It's been a little difficult to get a hold of the graphics that they used at this morning's press briefing.

Emily Lakdawalla

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Diviner team just released some preliminary views of their data taken during the LCROSS impact, which clearly shows the thermal signature from the crash into the Moon.

Emily Lakdawalla

I'm back online and ready to watch LCROSS smash into the Moon this morning!

Emily Lakdawalla

The visualization studio at Goddard Space Flight Center has just posted some handy simulations of what we can expect the LCROSS impact to look like.

Emily Lakdawalla

LCROSS and its Centaur upper stage have separated successfully, and the LCROSS shepherd spacecraft has braked in order to follow behind the Centaur when both impact the Moon tomorrow.

Emily Lakdawalla

As a reminder that we've been crashing stuff into the Moon for decades, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) team released today a photo of the crater made by the spent upper stage of the Saturn rocket that lofted the Apollo 14 mission to the Moon.

Emily Lakdawalla

Way early tomorrow morning, LCROSS and its Centaur upper stage will crash into the lunar south pole.

Emily Lakdawalla

The caption to today's image release from the MESSENGER team concerns their long-term campaign to study Mercury's brightness through a range of phase angles.

Emily Lakdawalla

Today's science press release out of the Division of Planetary Sciences meeting concerns changes in lakes near Titan's south pole observed during Cassini's mission. In brief, repeat Cassini RADAR observations of the same spots during different Titan flybys turned up places where there appeared to be dark lakes in earlier images and dry lakes in later images.

Ryan Anderson

Next up in my series of posts about the instruments on MSL is the Mars Descent Imager (MARDI).

Emily Lakdawalla

I wonder if this came from the same original body as Block Island, or if Meridiani is the kind of slowly deflating landscape that accumulates meteorites at its surface, like the ANSMET meteorite hunting spots in Antarctica?

Emily Lakdawalla

Here's a pretty shot of Mercury taken by MESSENGER on approach...but wait, what's that tiny little speck in the lower left corner of the photo?

Emily Lakdawalla

Third Time's No Charm: MESSENGER's Third Gravity Assist Successful, But "Safe Mode" Interrupts Science

Ryan Anderson

Last time, I talked about the MastCam color cameras on MSL, so it only makes sense to continue with one of the other cameras: The Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI).