Have Nasa deliberately blurred this image.

MAN-MADE COMET CRATER: In July 2005, NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft dropped an 820-lb copper projectile onto the surface of Comet Tempel 1. Almost six years later, NASA finally saw the impact crater. On Valentine's Day 2011, long after the dust had cleared, Stardust-NExT flew past Tempel 1 and photographed the impact site:

spaceweather.com...

Now look at the two images the one from 2005 is better than the one from 2011,
www.nasa.gov...

While I do believe that nasa would blur something out if it deems it sensitive material, this could just be a poor image. As a photographer, I have seen my fair share of "accidental out of focus images". Now the question is, when they get a chance to take another, and dont.... Then we can start thinking about why not... imo

reply to post by remymartin


The image from 2005 is the a result of processed image data from the Deep Impact impactor camera, which were taken only a few miles from the comet. The 2011 images were taken at a distance of about 125 miles.

reply to post by nataylor


Thats not correct. Where is your source

Deep impact craft 2005

After release of the impactor, the flyby spacecraft maneuvers to a new path that, at closest approach passes 500 km (300 miles) from the comet. The flyby spacecraft observes and records the impact, the ejected material blasted from the crater, and the structure and composition of the crater's interior.

www.nasa.gov...

Stardust-NExT 2011

The spacecraft made its closest approach to comet Tempel 1 on Monday, Feb. 14, at 8:40 p.m. PST (11:40 p.m. EST) at a distance of approximately 178 kilometers (111 miles). Stardust took 72 high-resolution images of the comet.

www.nasa.gov...


Even from a presentative view it should be better quality, perhaps there is no crater from deep impact.

yeah, it got stinky once they announced they had to delay the images.

reply to post by remymartin


The images from 2005 are not from the flyby spacecraft, they are from the impactor.

Here's the source of the composite image: deepimpact.umd.edu...

More info here: deepimpact.umd.edu...

The final composite image was built up from more than 25 ITS images all scaled to 5 meters per pixel. Locations observed at a greater distance were replaced by images at closer range. The impact site has the highest resolution because images were acquired until about 4 seconds from impact or a few meters from the surface.

The ITS is the impactor targeting sensor. As they note, the images span up to about 4 seconds from impact.

Thus, the 2005 Deep Impact images were taken at a much closer distance than the 2011 images from Stardust/NExT.

reply to post by nataylor


Thankyou i stand corrected.

To my mind, my comments to follow could have a bearing upon the the point of this thread.

I'm not sure how big this comet is (too lazy to check), but I doubt that is is more than a third of the size of Phobos,the larger of the two moons of Mars. We know fairly well the miniscule gravity on Phobos, it is about 1/1000th that of Earth (although its somewhat oblong shape causes a variance at different positions). A baseball throw at a speed of 35 mph from Phobos will go into orbit around it (if properly angled).

Given these standard conditions, we can expect that an impact crater from a very high-speed object will spew debris back out of the crater at a velocity somewhat reduced from that of the impacting object, but significient, nonetheless. It seems to be that there would be virtually zero ejectra in the near vicinity of the crater. A rim would be apparent perhaps from material that failed to completely seperate from the surrounding ragolith, but nothing would be scattered arould the near vicinity of the crater as we would and do find on earth.

Most ejecta would undoubtedly attain escape velocity and be gone. Those elements that did not and were so slow as to remain in various motions around the main body could impact at various places and but would be entirely unrecognizable as being related to the crater. So how can the scientist say that some of the debris "went up and came right back down." That does not make common sense according to simple physics.