Bob Moler's Ephemeris Blog

Wow!  I was tipped off by Emily Lackdawalla‘s Planetary Society Blog.  She found the image of the Deep Impact site.  I pulled the image from the JPL site, enlarged it, tweaked the brightness levels, and sharpened it a bit.

I got the impact site wrong, since it hadn’t been pointed out yet.  I thought it was that bright spot, definitely not visible in the 2005 images.  In perusing the press conference images several hours later I saw the real impact.  A low crater that blends with the color and terrain around it.  It goes to show how fast the dust liberated by the comet’s out gassing covers the surface of the comet.  I’d bet it we ever pass the comet next time around the fresh impact would be covered too.

Impact crater on Comet Tempel 1. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell. Image enhanced and annotated by Bob Moler