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Post Info TOPIC: New Lunar Crater


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New Lunar Crater
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There's a new crater on the Moon. It's about 14 meters wide, 3 meters deep and precisely one month, eleven days old.

NASA astronomers watched it form:
"On May 2, 2006, a meteoroid hit the Moon's Sea of Clouds (Mare Nubium) with 17 billion joules of kinetic energy—that's about the same as 4 tons of TNT. The impact created a bright fireball which we video-recorded using a 10-inch telescope." - Bill Cooke, the head of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office in Huntsville, Alabama.

MOVIE (271kb, gif)

Lunar impacts have been seen before, but this is the best-ever recording of an explosion in progress:
Taking into account the duration of the flash and its brightness (7th magnitude), Cooke was able to estimate the energy of impact, the dimensions of the crater, and the size and speed of the meteoroid.
It was a space rock about 25 cm wide travelling at 38 km/s.

Source

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