Quote:
Originally posted by om@umr.edu+Jul 11 2005, 06:05 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (om@umr.edu @ Jul 11 2005, 06:05 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin-VanderL@Jul 11 2005, 05:22 PM
There's already information about the amount of water detected, and not just OH, . . .
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Thanks for the link, VanderL.
However, I looked at the figure with the four measurements here,
Water Vapor Measurements.
Perhaps others can see useful information there, but frankly I was very disappointed.
I expected quantitative information on the major comet constituents from NASA's much celebrated Deep Impact on the 4th of July .
Are there other links which give relative amounts of
a.) Rocky material
b.) Water, and
c.) Hydrocarbons
in the comet?
I would hate to see the
Deep Impact event go the way of the
Genesis Mission and fade from view with nothing but empty promises.
With kind regards,
Oliver
http://www.umr.edu/~om [/b][/quote]
Ouch Oliver,
I think your suspicions that the Deep Impact might fade from view are correct if
this article as anything to go by.
I hope this report is a "one off' that won't reflect the future publications. But if I read this article correctly, nothing of any importance or relevance was learned from the DI mission. Nothing really happened, the "comet goes back to sleep" and so should we!
From the article:
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From the current analysis, it appears most likely that the impactor did not create a large new zone of activity and may have failed to liberate a large quantity of pristine material from beneath the surface.
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I wonder what all that celebrating was about after the impact, I read this as "the results don't match our model(s), forget about this mission, we'll need a drill to get to where the ice surely must be".
Quote:
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Further images obtained with, among others, the adaptive optics NACO instrument on the Very Large Telescope, showed the same jets that were visible prior to impact, demonstrating that the comet activity survived widely unaffected the spacecraft crash.
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Then I suggets you look at the images of the NOT telescope at El Roque de los Muchachos observatory (La Palma, Spain). You can find these images at
this website , if that aren't any new jets (well the old ones are also there, that makes it an almost lie?) than I'll buy a hat and eat it.
Quote:
Further spectropolarimetric observations with FORS1 have confirmed the surface of the comet to be rather evolved - as expected - but more importantly, that the dust is not coming from beneath the surface. These data constitute another unique high-quality data set on comets.
Comet Tempel 1 may thus be back to sleep but work only starts for the astronomers.
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See? Nothing happened, everything was as expected and the work that has to be done will take a long, long time. Gee, am I disappointed?
I wonder what will happen to the crater contest, maybe they'll organize a lottery and make sure the scientists involved can't enter the competition.
Cheers.