from NASA Meteor Watch Back on St. Patricks Day (March 17), the lunar impact team, led by Dr. Rob Suggs, observed the brightest lunar impact we have seen in over 7 years of monitoring. Reaching a magnitude of +3, the flash lasted over a second; normally our flashes are around +9, and only appear in a single video frame (1/30 of second). On that same evening, our all sky cameras picked up a cluster of bright (big) meteors coming from the constellation of Virgo at a speed of 26 km/sec (58,000 mph); ...we figure other members of this group were also hitting the Moon, and that one of these caused the bright flash. The energy released by the impact on the Moon was about 1.3 tons of TNT, meaning that the meteoroid was about 22 cm (9 inches) in diameter, with a mass of 16 kilograms (35 lbs). The impact team was also able to determine the location on the Moon, and sent those coordinates to the LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) program so they could search for a possible crater... This is the video of the flash produced when the meteoroid hit the lunar surface.
Posted on: Fri, 20 Dec 2013 03:15:01 +0000
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