The boulder, which came from space, provoked a short but bright flash, captured from Earth.
A Japanese astronomer captured the fall of a meteorite on the surface of the Moon, which caused a brief flash on the night side of the Earth’s satellite. Space writes about it.
Daichi Fujii, curator of the Hiratsuka City Museum, recorded the event with cameras set to monitor the moon.
A Japanese astronomer recorded the fall of a meteorite on the moon
The time of the outbreak was fixed at 20:14:30.8 Japan time or 11:14 GMT on February 23rd. The meteorite appears to have landed near Ideler L crater, slightly northwest of Pitiscus crater, Fujii said.
Meteorites fly at an average speed of about 48,280 km/h or 13.4 km/s. Their high-speed impacts generate intense heat and create craters, as well as emitting a bright flash of visible light. Collisions with the Moon can be seen from Earth if the celestial rock was large enough and occurred in the area that was facing Earth during the lunar night.
The newly formed crater could be about 12 meters in diameter and could be confirmed by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter or India’s Chandrayaan 2 lunar probe, Fujii said.
Although meteorites head towards Earth every day, the vast majority of them burn up completely on contact with the atmosphere. The moon only has a very thin exosphere, meaning that meteors that don’t reach the Earth’s surface usually collide with the lunar surface.
Capturing these cosmic events also has scientific value, helping scientists understand the rate of impacts on the lunar surface, which is all the more relevant as the US and other countries prepare to send astronauts to the Moon.
Recall that earlier NASA representatives summed up the results of the study of the results of the successful Artemis 1 mission and announced the start date of the Artemis 2 mission. As part of this flight, four astronauts on the Orion spacecraft will fly to the moon. This flight will begin in November 2024, just 2 years after the launch of the Artemis 1 mission.
