Hi,

   Thanks, Thomas, for posting this site!

   The CFHT site has much new material posted:
http://www.cfht.hawaii.edu/News/Smart1/

   A lightly processed version of the raw data
shows the impact debris cloud moving down along
the direction of the impact. It was processed by
subtracting the pre-impact data from all frames that
follow the impact, revealing more subtle detail. You
can view it on the webpage and download it from there, or directly from here:
http://www.cfht.hawaii.edu/News/Smart1/animdust_small.gif

   Of course, the raw data is so over-saturated that it's
mostly a mess of speckles. But also available from the CFHT website is a version heavily processed to present the event as we would expect it to appear in visual light, as a dark surface with a bright impact flash and the dust and debris cloud. A threshold value is set as the boundary between light and dark, then all values above the threshold are brightened and all values below the threshold are darkened, in proportion to their distance from the threshold. (They don't say that's what they've done, but that's how you do this.) It doesn't appear on the website except as downloadable from a one-word link:
http://www.cfht.hawaii.edu/News/Smart1/animhard.gif

   It's definitely worth a watch! Very impressive, much
more so than the raw data, and gives you a better "feel"
for the event.

The CFHT site also has a link to download the fifteen frames of this animation as a mosaic of the individual frames:
http://www.cfht.hawaii.edu/News/Smart1/tile.gif

   There is also a purported amateur acquisition of
the event using an 8" Meade telescope and a 640x480 Phillips ToUcam Pro:
http://cosmonut.org/Smart-1.gif

If this film is verified, it would be a remarkable piece of luck and/or skill considering that much more capable (larger) instruments failed to detect the event. In its favor is that in this film, as in the CFHT raw data, there is a transient "afterglow" at the impact spot in the frame following the impact frame, but a much fainter "afterglow" than in the CFHT data. The Phillips ToUcam Pro uses a non-CMOS chip that is simply more sensitive to infrared than most of the supposedly "better" detectors sold as for astro-
nomical use, and many amateur astronomer websites
urge the use of an IR blocking filter with this camera
to prevent IR from fogging the visual light image.
Many digital device CCD's are have very good IR response. Nikon even had to modify one of its high- end cameras because of its disconcerting ability to "see through" some loose cool clothing to the warmer (brighter in IR) body of the person inside that clothing. Whoops!


Sterling K. Webb
--------------------------------------------------------------------
----- Original Message ----- From: "Thomas Kurtz" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Meteoriten-Mailingliste" <[email protected]>
Sent: Wednesday, September 06, 2006 5:00 AM
Subject: [meteorite-list] "Moon debris dust cloud" [SMART 1]


Hi meteorite friends,


here is the first short movie af the debris-cloud which developed from the SMART 1 impact :


http://www.astro.uni-bonn.de/~dfischer/mepco/



Enjoy, Thomas Kurtz, Hannover, Germany



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