Forget Live Aid . . . You Want Live Impact

[MTI]

Kitt Peak Visitor Center to Provide Live Images of Comet Impact

How can you watch the planned first-of-its-kind collision between a comet and a spacecraft from Earth this weekend, even if your night skies do not allow a direct view?

The Visitor Center at Kitt Peak National Observatory plans to offer a live feed of the encounter between NASA's Deep Impact mission and Comet Tempel 1 starting this Sunday night (local time), running about an hour before the planned 10:52 p.m. PDT impact though about 45 minutes afterward. The feed will consist of still images of the distant comet, and a frequently updated movie assembled from the individual frames. Each frame will consist of a 30-second exposure taken with an electronic CCD imager attached to the 20-inch Ritchey-Chretien telescope in the Kitt Peak Visitor Center observatory.

The comet feed from Kitt Peak will be available on the Internet at: www.noao.edu/news/deep-impact

That's neat, although I doubt I'll be back in time to watch as it will likely take my girlfriend and I about an hour to return from Fire works Sunday night!