Deep Impact Observation at
the CSO
Quick Reports On the Deep Impact Observations at
the CSO And Video Conference Outreach Events Joining From The CSO
Control Room
Under reasonably good weather,
Darek Lis and Matthew Sumner at
Caltech had made
spectroscopic observations of the deep impact event, using the 300 GHz band
heterodyne
receiver and 50MHz/4GHz band spectrometers at the Caltech Submillimeter Observatory (CSO) telescope,
located at the top of
the high mountain Mauna Kea, Hawaii. The CSO has a 10.4 meter (34.1 feet)
diameter
radio telescope. The
primary goal was to characterize the amount of volatiles released
by the impact and the speed and direction of the released gases, which may be traced by
some molecules which were detected towards other comets.
The CSO telescope started integration towards the comet Tempel 1 at
around 19h HST
on the day, July 3rd, about 50 minutes before the impact, at the frequency
of 307 GHz
(about 980 micron, or 0.98 millimeter, in wavelength).
According to Darek Lis, although the CSO spent roughly 10 hours (two
first half nights, on the impact day and the following day) in total, unfortunately
the telescope did not
catch strong emission from a couple of molecules which observers were
looking for,
including methanol (CH3OH) and HCN molecules, through
the deep impact event. In
addition to the
heterodyne receiver, our wide field sensitive submillimeter camera, called
SHARCII (Submillimeter
High Angular Resolution Camera) was also ready to be used. But
this instrument was not
used during the period.
Outreach events dedicated for
the Deep Impact were held on the Big
Island,
the Maui Island, and the Oahu Island during the impact time. According to Gary
Fujihara at University of
Hawaii Institute for Astronomy, who is the organizer of the events,
over 500 people
came out to the Maui Community College for the event, and about
the same number
for the Hilo event at University of Hawaii Hilo UCB 100.
Hiroko Shinnaga,
staff scientist at the Caltech Submillimeter Observatory, and Matthew
Sumner, Ph.D. student at Caltech, talked with people in Hilo and on Maui
through webcam,
from the summit CSO control room. Sarah Landstreet, summer
student at the CSO from Canada, also
joined the event from the summit control room and provided a
great help for
this exciting outreach event.
created on 7 July 2005
For questions and/or comments, contact Hiroko at
shinnaga@submm.caltech.edu