Identifcation of the lunar flash of 1953 with a fresh crater on the Moon's surface

Details Identifcation of the lunar flash of 1953 with a fresh crater on the Moon's surface Identifcation of the lunar flash of 1953 with a fresh crater on the Moon's surface

Nov 2001

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2001dps....33.1004j&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS Meeting #33, #10.04; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 33, p.1037

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

The 1953 photograph of a flash on the Moon by an amateur astronomer (Stuart, 1956) is the only unambiguous record of the rare crash of an asteroid-sized body onto the lunar surface. We estimate that this event would have made a 1-2 km sized crater, and that the radius of the impacting body was about 170 m. Such an event would cause destruction of a large metropolitan-sized area if it occurred on Earth. Although not detectable with ground-based telescopes, this crater should be visible on space-based images of the Moon obtained by the Lunar Orbiter and Clementine missions. A search of images from the Clementine mission reveals a 2-km crater with a high-albedo, blue, fresh-appearing ejecta blanket at the location of the flash. The crater is not clearly visible on Lunar Orbiter images of the impact region. (The size may be substantially overestimated, as the ejecta blanket cannot be distinguished from the crater itself). The identification of this crater offers an opportunity to investigate subsurface unaltered lunar soils. Our results suggest that the effects of space weathering occur rapidly. Funded by NASA and NSF Stuart, L. (1956). The Strolling Astronomer. Vol 10, 42-43.

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