Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

Thursday, November 4th.*  The sun will rise at 8:24.  It’ll be up for 10 hours and 3 minutes, setting at 6:27.   The moon, 2 days before new, will rise at 7:52 tomorrow morning.

The Deep Impact spacecraft, which witnessed the impact of its Impactor into Comet Tempel 1 in 2005 has been redirected to Comet Hartley 2.  At 10:01 this morning it will pass its closest to that comet at 434 miles.  This is the EPOXI mission, the retargeting of the spacecraft to a new comet.  The Arecibo radio telescope on Puerto Rico has already reached out and touched the Nucleus of Comet Hartley 2 and has released its images, showing the nucleus to be a skinny bowling pin shape a bit less than a mile and a half long and tumbling slowly at a rate of 13 to 18 hours.  The spacecraft will be positioned to protect itself from the escaping particles of the comet and to photograph the comet, so will not have its antenna pointed to the earth until after the encounter.

Times, as always are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan.