(meteorobs) Seeing the Deep Impact impact flare from Earth!

[David Entwistle]

In message <42CFC341.nailGL3CF11U38A at aibn40.astro.uni-bonn.de>, Daniel
Fischer <dfischer at astro.uni-bonn.de> writes
>There has been deafening silence on this list w.r.t. the Deep Impact story
>which apparently most subscribers think has nothing to do with meteors - WRONG!
>At http://outreach.jach.hawaii.edu/pressroom/2005-deepimpactlight you can read
>that the thermal flare of the impact has been videorecorded from Hawaii with
>a rather small telescope. My gut feeling is that amateur astronomers could
>have done that, too, e.g. with those Mintron and Watec cameras popular among
>meteor observers. I'm just investigating how bright the feature actually was
>and what kind of instrument one might have needed; is anyone aware of similar
>successes by amateurs (i.e. sightings of the initial flare, not the ejecta
>cloud that was quite evident in the following hours)?
>
>Daniel Fischer

Hi Daniel,

Depends what you mean by rather small.  ;o)

I'm not familiar with the layout of the UKIRT, but the following web
page suggests that the fast guide camera uses the telescope's main
optical path, so benefits from a the full 3.8-metre (12.5-foot) primary
mirror aperture. 

http://www.jach.hawaii.edu/UKIRT/telescope/a_and_g.html

There are quite a lot of amateur, and small telescope observations on
the web, but a quick look hasn't revealed any that claim to have imaged
the impact itself.

Deep Impact Amateur Observer's Program 
http://deepimpact.umd.edu/amateur/gallery.cfm


Deep Impact Small telescope Science Program
http://deepimpact.umd.edu/stsp/objectives/index05.shtml
-- 
David Entwistle