On Friday, October 9, 2009, at approximately 6:30 am CST, the NASA Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) will be impacting a crater near the southern pole of the Moon. It will be sending up a plume of dust above the lunar surface, a plume that NASA will be searching for signs of water ice. More information on this can be found at the NASA page www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LCROSS/impact/event_index.html .The NIU Davis Observatory will be hosting an event from 5:00am to 7:00am on October 9 to attempt to view the dust plume resulting from the impact. We expect this to also be an excellent time to observe other objects, including
Mars and Venus. For more information or for directions to the observatory, please e-mail observatory@niu.edu, call 753-1305 or go to www.niu.edu/physics/observatory.