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Emily Lakdawalla Profile picture
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Oct 5 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Nice coffee break at #DPS2022, caught up with a bunch of people and now I'm off to Pluto, where Leslie Young is talking about a recently observed occultation with her habitual dry-as-desert wit.
Leslie Young: "One site only got data on egress; they were supposed to be part of the picket fence [a closely spaced line of telescopes] but their RV was infested by ants." #AstronomerProblems #AustraliaProblems #DPS2022
No scientific results to report yet, but Young shows they got absolutely gorgeous data during the 1 Jun 2022 occultation of Pluto by a magnitude 13 star, multiple chords with two showing a spectacular, strong central flash. Despite the ants. #DPS2022
...occultation of a magnitude 13 star by Pluto, clearly the coffee hasn't worked yet...

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More from @elakdawalla

Emily Lakdawalla Profile picture
Oct 5
Gooooooood morning London! Today at #DPS2022 I'll be checking out Uranus and Saturn's rings, changes at Pluto since the New Horizons flyby, interstellar traveling rocks, outer planet irregular satellites, and keeping an ear out for early JWST results.
I barely made it to the rings session in time to see Matt Hedman show off some new results on a big brightening of a dusty ring at Uranus, revealed in part by some terrific reprocessing of Voyager data by an amateur, @IanARegan. Nice work, Ian!
It's a little too early in the morning for me to comprehend Bill Hubbard's talk, but the idea that the rate that Titan is receding from Saturn, the precession of Saturn's spin axis, and the cyclical change in tilt of Neptune's spin axis are all linked is...wow. #DPS2022
Read 9 tweets
Emily Lakdawalla Profile picture
Oct 2
It’s always very sad to lose a spacecraft, but MOM was essentially a technology demonstration for India, its first ever deep space mission, designed and built on a shoestring budget. To have lasted nearly nine years is an achievement to be very proud of.
India oversold scientific capabilities & achievements of MOM, and undersold and underused its ability to photograph the full globe of Mars in stunning color and detail, which I’ll always be sad about. But getting to Mars and surviving for so long on the 1st try is amazing.
I hope this isn’t India’s only trip to Mars. I hope to see future collaborations that will make the most of India’s experience and capability in affordable, reliable access to space combined with real collaboration with the international scientific community.
Read 8 tweets
Emily Lakdawalla Profile picture
Sep 27
Here's the replay of the DRACO camera view of the #DARTMission impact onto Dimorphos, the moon of Didymos earlier today. Now time for me to play with some images...
Well I probably can't beat this #DARTMission
Oooooohhhhh! Wow!
Read 16 tweets
Emily Lakdawalla Profile picture
Sep 27
OK y'all #DARTmission post-impact press briefing is live now here:
nasa.gov/nasalive
"Once we got a look at Dimorphos, we were very confident we were going to hit." (If Dimorphos had been a contact binary like comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko or New Horizons' target Arrokoth, a nearly direct hit on its centroid could've turned into a miss. Fortunately, it was round.)
I tried to call in to the press briefing to ask a question about image release plans, but, technical difficulties. There was one question on the briefing about LICIAcube plans... 1/n
Read 11 tweets
Emily Lakdawalla Profile picture
Sep 26
Thar they are! Right now Dimorphos and Didymos are both this bright dot of light. They’ll separate into two dots in a little while. #DARTMission

I’ll add photos on to this thread periodically as approach continues.
At the moment, this is the only source for the approach images. If they have not appeared on a website by the time of the post-impact press briefing scheduled for (I think) 5pm Pacific time, I will ask! #DARTmission
So one hour prior to impact, or roughly 35 minutes after this tweet, the #DARTmission photos should start separating the two components of the Dimorphos system.
Read 42 tweets
Emily Lakdawalla Profile picture
Sep 26
Less than seven hours til #DARTsmash! Live countdown and links to official streams are on the mission website here: dart.jhuapl.edu
And I’ve got you covered with links to background information on the mission to answer all your questions about #DARTMission #DARTsmash on my Patreon: patreon.com/posts/72349462…
Just six hours to #DARTMission #DARTsmash now. The live feed from DART's DRACO camera will pick up at 2:30pm California time, a little more than 4 hours from now. eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
Read 5 tweets

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