Stargazing Potential Impact of Meteoroid During Lunar Eclipse on January 21, 2019

[russ_watters]

Anyone else watching the lunar eclipse tonight? It starts at about 9:30PM EST, with totality at 11:41. It's cold and windy in PA, but at least it's mostly clear. Here's a couple of pre-eclipse photos:

 

[davenn]

unfortunately, it wasn't visible from my part of the world

 

[jtbell]

I stepped outside to take a look with unaided eyes. The moon is still bright with a bit of darkening on one side.

 

[diogenesNY]

Cold, clear night here in Durham NC.

Nice chunk of it missing so far. :)

diogenesNY

 

[LURCH]

West Michigan. Clear night; literally not a cloud to be found. Unfortunately, wind chill is -2°F.

 

[jtbell]

Looks like maybe 90% total now. The uneclipsed part is still bright enough to drown out any blood-red tint in the shadow.

 

[scottdave]

Looks like maybe 90% total now. The uneclipsed part is still bright enough to drown out any blood-red tint in the shadow.

I can see it too in the Houston area. Taking a picture didn't work worth a flip, though. I can see a hint of dark red.

 

[stefan r]

I have clouds

 

[russ_watters]

 

[Charles Link]

Chicago has fairly clear skies. I saw it completely eclipsed about 10 minutes ago. $\\$ (Fifteen minutes later:) It's now almost directly overhead, so I can no longer see it out my window that faces east.

 

[scottdave]

Nice pics @russ_watters . Thanks for sharing.

 

[russ_watters]

This is going better than I had hoped. I'm fighting a crazy 35mph wind, but still taking photos up to 1 second exposure. Here's the latest first pass processed.

 

[Janus]

As is common for this time of the year in my part of the country, we had clouds all day.

 

[jtbell]

Post #12 looks like about the maximum "totality" that I saw, i.e. not uniformly reddish but with some brightness at one side. It's probably highly unlikely for the center of the Earth's shadow to pass over the center of the moon's disk, so there's almost always some asymmetry.

 

[mfb]

Looks like the Moon was hit by an asteroid shortly before totality - bright enough to be seen with the unaided eye. This is from a livestream from Morocco and this is from the US.
More discussion here

 

[russ_watters]

Post #12 looks like about the maximum "totality" that I saw, i.e. not uniformly reddish but with some brightness at one side.

Yes, it was taken right about maximum.

It's probably highly unlikely for the center of the Earth's shadow to pass over the center of the moon's disk, so there's almost always some asymmetry.

I was surprised to see the asymmetry. So what causes it? Is it due to atmospheric refraction bending a bit of sunlight around Earth?

[Edit; hmm, well I guess the red is too...]

 

[russ_watters]

Looks like the Moon was hit by an asteroid shortly before totality - bright enough to be seen with the unaided eye.

Awesome! I wasn't shooting continuously, so it is unlikely I caught it, but I'll definitely pore over my pics to check.

 

[anorlunda]

Thanks for braving the cold night so we could see those beautiful pictures Russ.

We went out just 2 minutes before totality in central Florida. The range of colors was amazing.

We have that famous big blue marble picture of Earthrise seen from Apollo 8. Did NASA ever get a shot of Earth seen from the moon at the time of eclipse? I mean lunar eclipse from Earth's vantage which is solar eclipse from Moon's vantage. Earth must look like a big red ring.

 

[russ_watters]

Did NASA ever get a shot of Earth seen from the moon at the time of eclipse? I mean lunar eclipse from Earth's vantage which is solar eclipse from Moon's vantage. Earth must look like a big red ring.

I don't see any with a few minutes google -- a solar eclipse, though.

 

[russ_watters]

Here's a composite of 1" exposures stacked and processed separately from the raw images to bring out the star field. I'm very pleasantly surprised that almost all of the 1" subframes were usable, considering the wind.

The forum software seems intent on re-sizing and softening it no matter how small I make it: Full size linked from facebook.

 

[mfb]

We have that famous big blue marble picture of Earthrise seen from Apollo 8. Did NASA ever get a shot of Earth seen from the moon at the time of eclipse? I mean lunar eclipse from Earth's vantage which is solar eclipse from Moon's vantage. Earth must look like a big red ring.

JAXA, not NASA: Sort of

I still don't find any reports about an asteroid impact. An event seen by at least two independent cameras and one direct viewer - at a time where so many cameras were pointed at the Moon. How can that go without any attention, or how can that be anything else?

 

[russ_watters]

I still don't find any reports about an asteroid impact. An event seen by at least two independent cameras and one direct viewer - at a time where so many cameras were pointed at the Moon. How can that go without any attention, or how can that be anything else?

I'm surprised - it's a great catch. I checked my photos and I didn't get it, unfortunately. I had it bracketed by just a couple of minutes.

 

[mfb]

Scott Manley picked it up
It was clearly an asteroid. There are telescopes that routinely watch the Moon for impacts - but not during full Moon because you don't spot the impacts then. Well... there are people working on it, and LRO might find the new crater once it has been localized sufficiently.

 

[Andy Resnick]

100% cloud cover here...

 

[Charles Link]

The asteroid mentioned by @mfb in post 15 seems to have been confirmed by multiple sources. Here is another "link": https://www.iflscience.com/space/watch-the-moment-a-meteor-hit-the-moon-during-the-lunar-eclipse/

 

[newjerseyrunner]

Is there any more information about the impactor? I don't even know how to guess at a range for size, but I imagine in order to be seen from Earth, it must have been larger than just a small boulder. Did any lunar seismic sensors detect the impact, I assume if not, that should be able to place a hard upper limit on it's mass.

 

[Tom.G]

...I don't even know how to guess at a range for size, but I imagine in order to be seen from Earth, it must have been larger than just a small boulder.

this from: https://gizmodo.com/holy-crap-the-moon-was-struck-by-a-meteorite-during-th-1831950105
...a preliminary guess is that the object, likely a tiny asteroid, had a mass around 22 pounds (10 kilograms).
If it was an Iron rich object, that would put it around the size of the fist of an adult man.

You might also like another thread here on the meteor strike.
https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/why-didnt-the-moon-go-fully-red-for-this-eclipse.964616/

Cheers,
Tom

 

[russ_watters]

this from: https://gizmodo.com/holy-crap-the-moon-was-struck-by-a-meteorite-during-th-1831950105
...a preliminary guess is that the object, likely a tiny asteroid, had a mass around 22 pounds (10 kilograms).
If it was an Iron rich object, that would put it around the size of the fist of an adult man.

Wow, that's a lot smaller than I would have guessed. Plugging 50km/s into an impact calculator yields 3 tons of tnt equivalent.

An image of the moon 500 pixels across is 7km/pixel resolution, so to cover more than one pixel (without blooming), the fireball would need to be 7km across. I would have guessed it was. However, I did notice it was short lived, so that implies small too.

 

[sophiecentaur]

Earth must look like a big red ring.

Yep. At least twice the thickness of atmosphere for the light to pass through than for one of our best sunsets. And it would be against a totally black background too. I don't really approve too much of space tourism but I'd make an exception for that. Once you are up there in a ship, you wouldn't need to go to the Moon. The Earth's shadow is out there 24/7. All you have to do is chase it.
It makes me wonder about existing pictures from past unmanned missions? Surely you'd get the effect from a GSO at times.

 

[Borg]

Today's APOD - Moon Struck.

 

[newjerseyrunner]

this from: https://gizmodo.com/holy-crap-the-moon-was-struck-by-a-meteorite-during-th-1831950105
...a preliminary guess is that the object, likely a tiny asteroid, had a mass around 22 pounds (10 kilograms).
If it was an Iron rich object, that would put it around the size of the fist of an adult man.

Wow, that's insane. I would have thought it was closer to the size of a yoga ball than a baseball.

 

[mfb]

Refined estimates for the impact: Location, orbit and energy of a meteoroid impacting the moon during the Lunar Eclipse of January 21, 2019
20-100 kg mass, 30-50 cm diameter and about 14 km/s. The impact had a shallow angle.
They expect a crater with 7-15 m diameter.