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Astro: peteschultz



 
 
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Old August 18th 10, 07:54 PM posted to alt.binaries.pictures.astro
Rick Johnson[_2_]
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Default Astro: peteschultz

Back in the late 50's and early 60's a school buddy of mine was Pete
Schultz. He and I helped found the Prairie Astronomy Club,
http://cs.astronomy.com/asycs/blogs/...astronomy.aspx

He went on to be the guy who punched holes in a comet and more recently
the moon. You don't want to hear his comments on how NASA screwed up
LCross with the last minute change in target to one that wouldn't allow
the plume to be seen from earth. This was known before the change but
they made it anyway, against his recommendation. There is still an
arrest warrant out for him in Russia thanks to an idiot astrologer and
even dumber police system that believes her claim that Deep Impact
ruined her astrology business by so altering the solar system she could
no longer make "accurate" forecasts! You've likely seen him on many
Shows firing NASA's high speed vacuum gun making craters and modeling
the moon's creation when the earth was hit by a Mars size body. His
wife made the earth stand ins for that one. He has been a prof at Brown
University for decades and traveled the world researching craters.

This June we were both giving talks at the same convention. As usual
his was better and far more exciting as he used a gun to create craters
that perfectly modeled ejecta trajectories of known impacts. These
showed why LCROSS' change of target at the last minute prevented the
impact from being seen from earth. He still has the same energy he had
50 years ago. Wish I did. My long grown son's comment was "Neat Dad
but your friend was AWESOME!" He was, I have to agree. Anyway, he told
me that he has an asteroid named after him so I had to give a go at
imaging it for him.

Unfortunately, it is dim and well below my -15 degree limit. It didn't
help that when it was a bit better placed in July it was so far away it
was too dim. Now it is dim because it is down deep in my atmospheric
extinction. When I had the best opportunity to image it the weather
didn't cooperate. When it finally did it was already in my Meridian
Tree so I had to wait for it to exit the tree. That puts it in a very
poor location. I was limited as to the time I had due to other trees
and it's low altitude putting it down below my observatory walls. You
can't go back a second night on a moving target. I only had a 30 minute
window so took the asteroid August 16 and one 10 minute round of color
the following night. The asteroid was too dim to get through the color
filters so that didn't matter. It was barely in the same field of view.

I've attached a full image and an annotated image as well as a crop.
There were a half dozen asteroids in the frame but three were lost to
atmospheric extinction. One spent most of the time behind a star.
Peteschultz is in the center of course. I couldn't see it in the 20
second framing image so had to trust the pointing accuracy of the
Paramount. You likely will need the annotated image to spot it however.
The asteroid was in retrograde motion so moving down and to the right.
North is up in this image as it is in most of my images.

Naming citation:
(16952) Peteschultz = 1998 KX3
Peter H. Schultz, a geologist at Brown University, has studied cratering
phenomena experimentally and in the field. He has played a major role in
defining and developing the Deep Impact mission, particularly through
his cratering experiments at the NASA Ames Vertical Gun Range.

14" LX200R @ f/10 L=3x10' (14 degrees above horizon on average) RGB
1x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Video made at Pete's presentation. It's more spectacular live but
you'll get the idea. I wish there was audio to go with it but it was
taken with a high speed camera so audio wasn't possible.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HMnA6EOAg0

I've also attached a photo of Pete (left) and me (right) at the banquet.
Middle fellow is Jack Dunn planetarium director for Mueller Planetarium.

Rick
--
Correct domain name is arvig and it is net not com. Prefix is correct.
Third character is a zero rather than a capital "Oh".

Attached Thumbnails
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ID:	3090  
 




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