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Happy 4th of July - where you can find it!

Down here we're still under the heel of the Bush administration, with el Shrubbo speechifyin' today about how grateful his financial backers and some twisted, bloodthirsty version of Our Lord, Jesus Christ are with the sacrifices made by our armed forces, so there's not so much in the way of great things to drink in down here on Earth.

Still, the weather's terrific here in Pennsylvania today, and hopefully the same's the case where you are. We'll have a local fireworks display tonight, and all indications are it'll be an excellent night for it.

So far the best news for this hoiliday in conjunction with the US government is that the Deep Impact mission went off well, based on all overnight reports. The image seen here was taken by the flyby craft's medium resolution camera some 16 seconds after the washing machine-sized impactor probe struck comet Tempel 1 at 10 kilometers per second (6.3 miles per second) at 1:52 am EDT today.

Sensors on the fly-by craft monitored the impact, the nature of the matter ejected by it, and collected data before and after passing through the tail of the comet. It's unfortunate, but understandable, that the monitoring craft had to essentially close its eyes - shielding its sensors for 27 minutes - while passing through the comet's inner coma. They didn't want to take an undue risk of crippling the craft's sensors. The data is being processed, with the goal being a more precise look at the inner constituents of the comet, which should provide the best available record of the early elemental make-up of the solar system.

The image here on the left is one of the last things the impactor itself saw, as this is a shot taken by the probe itself roughly 60 seconds before impact with the roughly 6km wide comet. It continued to take similar shots until nearly the point of impact, as can be seen in the Quicktime movie the University of Maryland scientists have strung together from the images. The impactor itself is presumed to have vaporized in the impact.

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