Observations Of The LCROSS Impact From The MMT Observatory

Details Observations Of The LCROSS Impact From The MMT Observatory Observations Of The LCROSS Impact From The MMT Observatory

Jan 2010

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010aas...21560502h&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #215, #605.02; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 36, p.1129

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

On the night of UT 9 Oct 2009, the MMT Observatory 6.5-m telescope watched with multiple ‘eyes’ as NASA crashed the two LCROSS spacecraft into the Cabeus crater near the south pole of the Moon. The primary goal of the observations was to address the LCROSS mission’s first science goal: “Confirm the presence or absence of water ice in a permanently shadowed region on the Moon”. Using the MMT in conjunction with CLIO, a thermal infrared camera coupled with a low-resolution prism covering a spectral range of 2.5 - 4.5 µm, we obtained spectra across Cabeus crater throughout the event. These spectra bracket 3 µm to identify the 3-µm absorption feature caused by adsorbed or interlayer water or both in minerals created by the process of aqueous alteration, which could be present in plume dust if water ice is present in the impacted crater. Additionally, we trained three optical cameras with varying FOVs at the impact area, in particular, one fast temporal camera with a 0.7-µm medium band filter with the hope to follow the growth of expected plume development with time. As an observatory we used this unique observing night to reach out to the public and give them a glimpse of the professional astronomy world. We streamed the live images coming from three of our science cameras and web cams around the observatory on the internet and got thousands of viewers from around the world. We present a snapshot of the night and initial results from our observations.

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