So I watched the doo-dad crash into the satellite of an asteroid yesterday evening.
Very impressive, especially the final image, which was, although few people realize this, a close up of the huge pile of gravel and soil I am supposed to be sieving before the snow sets in.
Great Newtonian mathematics, great remote control (with a 5-minute lag, so ten-minute response time?), and the programming was OK too.
Smash!
My understanding is that the impact (14,000 mph and Kinetic energy proportional to the square of the velocity) was/will be enough to perturb the natural orbit of the Dimorphos which will have a follow-on effect to Didymos, which changes can be witnessed from Earth, and then more calculations will reveal to what extent earthlings can move on from ruing our own ecosystem and get down to ruining other ecosystems of the universe.
Question 1: Although this is phrased as a "see how much the orbit changes" it seems to me that it is really a matter of number-crunching, sieving through numeric data that now is sourced from telescopes, just as Graeme does when he grabs numeric data and presents a beauitiful JPG in these pages.
Question 2: Does Graeme's current system collect data in a form that could be used to analyze orbits, should Graeme decide to give it a shot?
Thanks, Chris
P.S. I note that less than 24 hours after impact, the image in the Wiki link above has been updated! C
Question for Graeme, mainly
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- PlutoniumLounger
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Question for Graeme, mainly
He who plants a seed, plants life.
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- Cosmic Lounger
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Re: Question for Graeme, mainly
ChrisGreaves wrote: ↑27 Sep 2022, 14:17My understanding is that the impact (14,000 mph and Kinetic energy proportional to the square of the velocity) was/will be enough to perturb the natural orbit of the Dimorphos which will have a follow-on effect to Didymos, which changes can be witnessed from Earth, and then more calculations will reveal to what extent earthlings can move on from ruing our own ecosystem and get down to ruining other ecosystems of the universe.
The Didymos Didymoon pair was chosen as a target in order that the impact would perturb the moon orbit without affecting the larger body orbit. Any change to the orbit of a major body could cause the catastrophic results that the DART experiment has been set up to guard against. Also, the plane of the orbit of didymoon around Didymos is in direct line of sight from Earth. This means that accurate measurements can be taken of the effects of the collision.
The DART mission is an important step forward for the protection of Earth from potential space rock collision. The ESA Hera mission will follow up the impact with ongoing measurements.
Here's an abstract:
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/PSJ/ac6f52
Regards
Graeme
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- Cosmic Lounger
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Re: Question for Graeme, mainly
Here's a follow up report from the SOAR Telescope in Chile:
https://noirlab.edu/public/news/noirlab2223/?lang=
Regards
Graeme
https://noirlab.edu/public/news/noirlab2223/?lang=
Regards
Graeme
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- PlutoniumLounger
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Re: Question for Graeme, mainly
Thanks Graeme. I saw this image through another link - BBC news probably - yesterday.
I figure that the aptly-named Charles Blue must be squeezing every bit, literally, of data and filling white boards with speculative theories and predictions.
Cheers, Chris
He who plants a seed, plants life.