[AZ-Observing] Newsweek's Version of Deep Impact

This week's July 18 Newsweek, on p. 23, in its now well-established
tradition of misinformation, says the "Deep Impact...traveled 83 million
miles before hitting a comet to successfully divert its path" - sheesh!

Scott Saari

-----Original Message-----
From: az-observing-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:az-observing-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Stanley A.
Gorodenski
Sent: Thursday, July 14, 2005 12:45 PM
To: AZ-Observing
Subject: [AZ-Observing] Speed of Tempel Ejecta


Gene Lucas forwarded me the following:

"The images obtained at the VLT show that after the impact, the =
morphology
of Comet Tempel 1 had changed, with the appearance of a new plume-like
structure, produced by matter being ejected with a speed of about 700 to
1000 km/h (see ESO PR Photo 23/05). This structure, however, diffused =
away
in the following days, being more and more diluted and less visible, the
comet taking again the appearance it had before the impact. 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 by the
spacecraft crash."

It appears the ejecta traveled considerably less than 6.3 miles/sec (the
speed of the Impactor), no more than 0.2 miles/sec. Stan



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