Ho pensato che la cosa migliore fosse scrivere direttamente al tecnico che compare nella foto, Anthony Colaprete, che mi ha gentilmente risposto poco fa. Colaprete mi scrive di aver ricevuto anche un altro messaggio simile, così mi ha inviato la stessa risposta e in allegato due TIF con le immagini originali (io le ho risalvate in JPG per poterle allegare qui ridotte ad una dimensione inferiore a 190k)
Si tratta di un normale "target" della zona di impatto, con la griglia di riferimento (reference grid).
Qui l'intera risposta che ho ricevuto, e che è stata da poco pubblicata da chi gli ha scritto prima di me nel forum AboveTopSecrets:
www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread819278/pg11
First off, the image isn’t staged! It was taken during the final descent of the Centaur stage to the moon. Kim and I (and another person behind us) are in the Science Operations Center (SOC) for LCROSS. What Kim and I are looking at are displays of our instrument data (cameras, spectrometers, etc….several of the camera feeds we streamed real-time to the web during the mission). The image of interest is a simulation of the moon’s surface generated from a digital elevation model and illumination models. It was made prior to the impact of the Centaur with the same lighting conditions as those at the day/time of impact. We knew where we wanted to impact (based on our expectation of the most likely location of hydrogen/water), but there was some uncertainty as to exactly where we would actually impact. We had a number of observatories on the ground (for example in Hawaii) trying to look for the impact plume (most didn’t see it, but some did) and we wanted to be able to tell the observatories if they needed to adjust their pointing based on the actual impact location. To do this we placed a grid on the image and provided the same grid to the observatories (in the perspective they would see it from on the ground). At the time of impact flash or plume detection in our cameras I was to identify the grid point and call it out to the person behind me (the person behind me was in direct communication with all the ground observatories, coordinating that part of the observation)…sort of like calling out a letter/number in bingo. The image with grid and the one corresponding to the view as seen from Hawaii on that night is attached to this email.
So, no it is not a base, but rather just a reference grid, and that watch has since broken, so I wouldn’t recommend it. I hope this helps.
Tony