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A meteorite hit the moon during yesterday's total lunar eclipse
- scrumbledober 8y agoScott Manley did a great quick video about this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Smp7TqccTpY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Smp7TqccTpY
- ghilston 8y agoI can't read his name without hearing it in his voice: > Scott Manley here
- isostatic 8y agoFly safe
- tyfon 8y agoMy wife always comes to sit in the couch when I turn on something from him just to hear the dialect. His way of saying Mun is the best ever and I'm not sure if it's his dialect or if it comes from playing Kerbal Space Program too much :)
- quakeguy 8y agoWhat kind of dialect is it if i may ask? Hearing him for the first time(a year ago or so), i thought he is from England. Really curious as his speech is quite unusual and also pleasant in a way.
- gowld 8y agoSounds Scottish.
- 19870213 8y agoHe is from Scotland, and if I recall correctly, currently a greencardholder living in San Fransisco.
- mnw21cam 8y agoAye. (For Pete's sake, don't call him English!)
- zrobotics 8y agoCan't find the video, but I believe he's specifically from Edinburgh, as there are many variants of Scottish accents.
- arethuza 8y agoAs a Scot he definitely sounds Scottish to me but with an overlay of an American accent - can't tell where in Scotland but I would guess East coast. A few of his words sounded fairly broad to me.
- beezischillin 8y agoI used to watch the ever living daylights out of his channel, but I kinda forgot about Kerbal Space Program for a while. I'm gonna have to pick it up again now get to binging his videos again. Him saying "Mün" is just one of the best things ever.
- tehduder9 8y agohe does a lot of space news and rocket videos now; they're very informative
- beezischillin 8y agowow! awesome!
- JshWright 8y agoYou missed the "Hullo"
- gibolt 8y agoAfter watching the video, I feel like there should be software that gets regular updates of planetary surfaces and highlights drastic changes. Probably exists somewhere, but would be neat to see historical changes
- simcop2387 8y agoThe biggest problem with this is getting the images. Projects like the LRO do this already I believe, but most changes are otherwise uninteresting.
- azernik 8y agoWe already do this for the starfield (that's how, for example, most Near Earth Object searches work); it's just harder to get high-resolution total-coverage imagery for planetary surfaces. As far as I understand, we only are getting repeat imagery from the LRO because it did one fast low-resolution pass and is now doing a lower-altitude, high-resolution pass.
- InclinedPlane 8y agoThere are automated systems that monitor the moon for impacts regularly, however they don't watch during a full moon because it's too bright (except during a lunar eclipse).
- A2017U1 8y ago> they don't watch during a full moon because it's too bright Have little knowledge of astronomy but from a photography perspective this is quite amusing, usually it's the opposite problem for many photos.
- ridgeguy 8y agoI'll speculate that NRO and similar agencies have such software. Doubt it's OSS, tho'.
- dotancohen 8y agoIf you can persuade some congressional committee to fund NASA to develop, launch, and maintain the probes then I'm sure you'll find no shortage of people willing to pay the taxes for it all. I happen to agree with you, and would be happy to see taxes allocated towards further exploration of the solar system. But resources are limited.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- sizzzzlerz 8y agoI know its just a coincidence that the meteor hit during a lunar eclipse while millions of people might have been watching (and probably not seeing it). But, it gives me chills to think that lump of rock has been orbiting through the solar system for possibly billions of years with its unknown fate already sealed. All it took was for the Sun and all the planets and moons to go through their cycles an uncountable number of times to bring it to its ultimate conclusion. Now, unknown asteroid, your watch is done.
- anonytrary 8y agoIf you think about it, the Earth and Moon and every other lump of rock in the universe are not fundamentally different than this one. Eventually their watches will end, too.
- balabaster 8y agoYeah, it's weird like the light from some of the stars takes so long to get to us that when it left home, the dinosaurs were still roaming the earth... and then after some 65 million years, it hits us allowing us to see that star which was once there in its place in the sky, and one assumes still is, but we can't be sure, and that's that. Done. Over. Gone. Though, I supposed given that energy can neither be created nor destroyed it somehow changes form and is absorbed in some fashion. Crazy for something to spend so long travelling in a straight(ish) line and the BAM! Finished.
- quakeguy 8y agoSome light that reaches us was sent out when earth wasn't even formed... And some light will never reach us, the universe is expanding at a higher rate, future astronomers will find the sky empty. That's crazy as well.
- gowld 8y agoLight travels in perfectly straight lines (geodesics in spacetime). The trip takes 0 time and 0 distance for the photon, from emission til absorption.
- Meteorites 8y agoMeteorites.
- wizzard 8y ago> The so-called “super wolf blood moon” was eagerly watched by millions of people around the world, mostly via live streaming video. How do they know most people watched via live stream as opposed to just looking out the window or a telescope?
- gowld 8y agoIt was visible from all of North and South America, and Western Europe, so most people couldn't see it.
- jstanley 8y ago* if you were lucky enough not to have complete cloud cover for the duration. It got so cloudy where I am shortly after the Earth's shadow began drifting across the moon that I couldn't even see which direction the moon was in. So I watched a live stream instead.
- jefurii 8y agoI checked ClearDarkSky[1] and was lucky enough to find a place to see it withing driving distance. There were three other carfuls of people from Southern California to see it. The clouds rolled in just after the point of total eclipse. [1] http://cleardarksky.com http://cleardarksky.com [edit: https->http]
- jstanley 8y agoLooks like the URL needs to be plain-http, not https. And unfortunately it thinks North America is the entire world. :)
- wizzard 8y agoEven if millions of people from Asia and Australia were interested enough to watch a live stream of it, I don’t believe they can categorically state that the majority of the people on the entire planet watched via live stream. I’m mostly arguing because I find the idea of everyone watching the eclipse on a video screen kind of sad.
- Syzygies 8y agoWouldn't a meteorite impact be even more visible in the dark part of a new moon? Why did researchers go out of their way to observe one during a lunar eclipse? (In elementary school during NASA's Mercury program, a joke made the rounds that a certain Eastern Bloc country's space program would land on the Sun by "flying at night".)
- chabes 8y agoIt sounds like it was simply observed by multiple separate casual observations. I doubt anyone would “go out of their way to observe one during a lunar eclipse”
- DoubleCribble 8y agoAnd yet, there was at least one... "On this occasion, Madiedo doubled the number of telescopes trained on different parts of the moon – from four to eight – in the hope of seeing an impact. “I had a feeling, this time will be the time it will happen,” says Madiedo."[0] [0]https://www.newscientist.com/article/2191526-a-meteorite-hit-the-moon-during-yesterdays-total-lunar-eclipse/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2191526-a-meteorite-hit...
- macintux 8y agoThe project that captured this one also actively monitors around new moons and previous eclipses.
- dylan604 8y agoYes, the new moon is when they are most active, however, one of the guys in the program specifically has been trying to see an impact during an eclipse for quite some time now. The shadow of the Earth causes the new moon phase, and it is the same shadow that causes the eclipse. Why wouldn't they take the free bonus 2ish hours of dark moon time to search?
- davidmurdoch 8y agoMeteorites aren't more active during a new moon; they're just easier to see. The shadow of the Earth does not cause the new moon phase. If it did, it'd be a lunar eclipse.
- ttonkytonk 8y agoAnybody know what time the strike occurred?
- cybersol 8y agoI didn't see it, but a couple of people in chat on the live PBS feed mentioned it. IIRC it was about half-way between peak and going back to partial.
- sp332 8y ago04:41:43 UTC https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/ai79zy/possible_meteor_impact_on_moon_during_the_eclipse/ https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/ai79zy/possible_mete... and https://twitter.com/chrfrde/status/1087532344909676545 https://twitter.com/chrfrde/status/1087532344909676545
- cpeterso 8y agoThis story reminded me of Neal Stephenson's 2015 novel Seveneves, where the Moon, struck by some unknown object, breaks apart. Most life on Earth is destroyed except for a few thousand people who can escape. Humanity has one year to prepare civilization for 5000 years in orbit before they can safely return to Earth again. Very interesting thought experiment on the technological and genetic outcomes! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seveneves https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seveneves
- quizme2000 8y agoSpoiler Alert! Yes in the first pages there is a moon event, the rest of your comment just gives away the plot.
- cmpaul 8y agoAgreed, could probably have avoided giving away the plot here. The book is definitely worth the read!
- cpeterso 8y agoI see what you mean, but I don't think I gave away too much of the plot. The back of the book itself provides all those same details, other than the word "Moon" which is revealed in the first sentence of the book. https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/515blU3eIzL.jpg https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/515blU3eIzL...
- detritus 8y agoI have this book on my shelf to read and, as with most books, I try not to read synposes or cover details in advance, preferring instead to have it be as much of an unknown journey as possible, so ... thanks for giving away what sounds like a fundamental part of the book and arguing against perhaps editing your original post.
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- bungaman 8y agowow
- bitwize 8y agoSo it was a SuperBloodWolfMeteorImpactMoon. Awesome.
- diggernet 8y agoLooking forward to high resolution before and after photos from LRO.
- jelliclesfarm 8y ago“Agent”!!! Seveneves by Neal Stephenson!
- bsherrill 8y agoI’m curious are we sure it was an asteroid that hit the surface?
- LandR 8y agoAs opposed to ?
- demarq 8y agostill amazed something the size of a football could cause that
- swebs 8y agoDid the impact produce light, or was that kicked-up dust reflecting sunlight?