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EPOXI

Two intriguing investigations -- One flight-proven spacecraft

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2007 Earth Flyby: SARA Images EPOXI's spacecraft

flyby pic from SARA Click for full size image.

Southeastern Association for Research in Astronomy (SARA) Captures Image of EPOXI's spacecraft

Caption: Dr. Bill Keel, Univ. of Alabama, remotely operated the 0.9m telescope of the SARA observatory at Kitt Peak to make this 5-minute exposure in red light. The exposure ran from 0430-0435 UT, with the telescope commanded to follow the spacecraft's predicted motion from the Horizons ephemeris open-loop. "This is an older instrument - you can see some periodic error in the star trails, which is why the spacecraft image is a bit elongated E-W. The CCD leaves afterglows from saturated stars. As luck would have it, EPOXI was moving through a field of unusually bright stars (you can see the scattered light from one at the top), so I had to subtract some of these afterglows using the fact that they do not move from one exposure to the next (unlike the spacecraft) - some of the subtraction boxes may show up in the image. This frame is about 8.2 arcminutes wide with north at the top."

Credit: Southeastern Association for Research in Astronomy

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