MORE ON THE MOON SHOT AND PALOMAR'S PLACE IN IT

The sixty-year old 200-inch Hale Telescope on Palomar Mountain was one of many telescopes across the globe and in space that were called into action to watch the impact of NASA’s LCROSS mission. LCROSS, short for Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, was intentionally crashed into a dark crater near the south pole of the Moon. It is believed that craters such as this one, which never receive sunlight, might harbor large quantities of water ice. It was hoped that the impact would dredge up dust, rock and vaporized ice into a giant plume of material that would be visible hear on Earth with telescopes as small as 12-inches in aperture. Astronomers could then analyze the ejected material in attempt to confirm or deny the possibility of water ice being located there. Unfortunately no impact plume was visible from any telescope that observed the impact.

The best observations of this event were clearly made with the Hale Telescope on Palomar. The old 200-inch was using an instrument that removes any blurring affects caused by turbulence in our atmosphere, giving it a resolving power greater than that of the Hubble Space Telescope. Tension and excitement in the data room at Palomar grew as the clock ticked to the impact at 4:31 a.m. on Friday, October 9. It was standing room only as the scientists were joined by interested members of the observatory staff and a film crew from the BBC, which traveled halfway around the globe just to witness the event from Palomar.

The telescope and its observing system performed flawlessly, yet as the impact time came and then passed there was no obvious sign of the impact. A live video feed from the control room at NASA’s Ames confirmed that the impact had occurred as scheduled. Other observatories soon began to confirm that nothing was seen.

First images from the probe and the observatories monitoring the event were shown off at NASA’s 7:00 a.m. press briefing. Although the impact was not observed, it was obvious at that time that Palomar’s images were the sharpest from any telescope that observed the event.


The photos show: Astronomers at Palomar Observatory review the images and data collected as NASA's LCROSS mission crashed into the Moon near the lunar south pole and a film crew from the BBC interviews lead scientist Antonin Bouchez (sitting facing camera) shortly after LCROSS crashed into the Moon.