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LCROSS Impact on the Moon Visible from Western Hemisphere	09.19.2009 15:30

Shortly after the launch of the NASA LRO/LCROSS spacecrafts from Florida on June 18, 2009, I checked to see if the moon would be in North America's part of the sky at the time of the estimated impact of LCROSS into the surface of the moon. The result: NO :-( sniff sniff. The moon would be over Asia, and seeing the moon from the USA would require looking directly through the Earth. Flash forward to today and well you already know the good news from the title, the LCROSS impact of the Lunar south pole will be visible from the entire Western Hemisphere!. I verified this by checking the LCROSS official website, which has a projection for the impact time in October listed. Then I opened Home Planet 3, put in my location of Redondo Beach, CA, and the impact time, and the sky view shows the moon almost directly at the zenith (right overhead)! Therefore, I either made a mistake when I checked the moon's location the first time, or there was a change to the ETA of the impact. Encoded on this blog post is an applet that automatically checks the official LCROSS website and displays just the projected impact time here, so this post will always be up-to-date even though it is written over 3 weeks before impact: Last Known: Oct 9, 11:31:19 UT (7:31:19 EDT, 4:31:19 PDT) From: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LCROSS/main/index.html
Also, the following image shows Earth and the Moon projected onto the Earth at the time of impact.

Location of Moon over Earth at time of LCROSS impact on Lunar South Pole The phase of the moon shown is correct, waning gibbous. Also, here is the view of the sky from Southern California that night:

I have heard that the impact will be in the shadowed part of the moon (i.e. not the illuminated side, but also not the "dark side" of the moon that humans on Earth never see either), close to the terminator (line between light and dark). So when the dust flies up from the impact, it will be illuminated by the Sun. I've also heard that it will only be visible with at least 10 inch telescopes, but I will still try myself anyways, with my humble 3 inch refractor. Good luck watching! (Here's an official link to observability: lcross.arc.nasa.gov/observation/amateur.htm) Also I checked to see if any locations outside of North/South America will have a view of the moon during impact, and the result is that the moon will be near the horizon for Western Europe and Africa, and the East coast of Asia (including Korea, Japan, and East Russia). South America will be entirely bathed in the sunlight of morning, and the hour in Europe will be the afternoon, making viewing with smaller aperture telescopes even less likely there. Projected Impact at time of this writing: Oct 9, 11:30 UT (7:30 EDT, 4:30 PDT)
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