September meteorite makes bright splash on moon


CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — A meteorite as large as 41/2 feet in diameter smashed into the moon in September, producing the brightest flash of light ever seen from Earth, astronomers said last week.

Similarly sized objects pummel Earth daily, though most are destroyed as they plunge through the planet’s atmosphere. NASA says about 100 tons of material from space enter Earth’s atmosphere every day.

The moon, with no protective atmosphere, is fair game for celestial potshots. The evidence is all over its face and is occasionally recorded by cameras.

Such was the case on Sept. 11, when a pair of telescopes in Spain, which were automatically trolling for lunar meteorite impacts, hit pay dirt with the longest, brightest flash ever observed on the moon.

“At that moment I realized that I had seen a very rare and extraordinary event,” astronomer Jose Madiedo, with the University of Huelva in Spain, said in a statement.

Typically, flashes of light from meteorite impacts on the moon last just a fraction of a second. The September flash was nearly as bright as Polaris, the North Star, and the afterglow alone lasted 8 seconds, a video recording made by Madiedo shows.

“Anyone on Earth who was lucky enough to be looking at the moon at that moment would have been able to see it,” the United Kingdom’s Royal Astro-

nomical Society said.

The report was included last week in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.