LCROSS Did Leave A Plume After All

Y'know, I blame Star Trek. Thanks to modern TV sci-fi, anything less than a huge explosion with a fireball of incandescent gas and blazing debris tracking hundreds of miles into space just leaves this CGI-jaded layman cold. ;-)

Seriously, I'm glad that they picked up something. I was afraid that something had made the Centaur crash off-target and they had missed all the action! Now they have to address and resolve the real issue. Was water ice detected? And, if so, how much?

I agree Ben. Actually we have raised two generations of people that believe that you can outrun explosions while at the same time leaping from buildings and stopping your fall by reaching out an grabbing something.

"You can't BS physics..." - Don Arabian, Head of the MER during Apollo.

I hope they find water ice, so we have a reason to go exploring.

Sorry, but the blame for the public's over active imagination expecting a giant plume like stuff in the movies rests with NASA PR folks, who distributed animations showing just such a plume and juicing up the public to watch the spectacle live. The crowd here in DC lured in the predawn darkness to come to the Newseum to watch "us kick up some Moondust!" was naturally expecting, well, some scenes of Moondust. Remember the great and timeless addage: under promise and over deliver.

Yeah Frank we can't forget about NASA. NASA's complicity (along with the media) in all this probably started with Comet Kahoutek in 1973.

LCROSS PI Colaprete said that "the ejecta brightness appears to be at the low end of our predictions." NASA could have done a better job of making the range of possibilities clear. There was definitely an expectation that something would be visible from Earth, though, otherwise professional observatories wouldn't have been trained on the moon for the impact.

It's a tough situation for NASA, though. This looked like a great opportunity to generate some public interest. It didn't work out quite as well as hoped, though. Had there been a more spectacular plume, and NASA had downplayed the event, then they might have been accused of missing a golden opportunity to generate public interest. The saddest thing about the publicity LCROSS got was all that "bombing the moon" rubbish.

The key thing is that some excellent data were gathered. I look forward to learning more about the results.

"The saddest thing about the publicity LCROSS got was all that "bombing the moon" rubbish."

Use the "bombing the moon" rubbish. Ask if everyone who will be talking has been checked for drugs and sanity. This is not a children's fiction item, large sums of money and jobs are involved.

Thanks Mike, I had never heard of Comet Kahoutek before now. Interesting reading and a valuable lesson that was apparently forgotten. [My ignorance of Kahoutek is semi-excusable given that I was an embryo at the time.]

I'm not surprised, but still relieved that they do have good data. When what you get is "the faint end", there's not much you can do for folks with only a 10" telescope, except warn them of the low probability. They also should have thought more about how to rush a little data onto NASA TV and a press release.

TitanLakes wrote: "There was definitely an expectation that something would be visible from Earth, though, otherwise professional observatories wouldn't have been trained on the moon for the impact."

Actually, they'd want to recruit any observatory capable of providing good spectra assuming the *bright* end of predictions. If it had met that threshold and they weren't watching, they'd feel stupid. This way, the absence of a measurable signal is a valid scientific result also.

On the other hand, encouraging amateurs with 10" telescopes to try it was optimistic, and maybe overpromising.

A "before impact" picture would be useful here, as the other features within the shadow resemble the feature identified as the plume.