An astronomer primarily based in Japan has captured the second when an unknown object – believed to be a meteor, and probably one of many Geminids – struck a part of the Moon.
The Geminids – first noticed lighting up our skies yearly within the mid-1800s – are an uncommon meteor bathe, coming from an asteroid that shows traits of a comet.
“The particles inflicting the Geminids originated from an asteroid often called 3200 Phaethon. After astronomers found Phaethon in 1983, they realized the asteroid’s orbit matched that of the Geminid meteors. This pointed to Phaethon because the supply of the annual meteor bathe. Even although most meteor showers originate from comets, Phaethon was categorized as a close to Earth asteroid and never a comet,” Serena Whitfield explains in a current NASA weblog.
“On event this classification has been challenged, as Phaethon’s orbit is just like that of a comet and NASA’s STEREO spacecraft in 2009 and 2012 detected a faint tail and speedy brightening across the asteroid’s closest method to the Sun. As a consequence, some astronomers confer with Phaethon as a ‘rock-comet’, although the time period ‘lively asteroid’ could also be higher, as related objects have been found in the primary asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.”
This annual bathe is lively from December 4 to twenty in 2024, with this 12 months’s peak occurring from December 13 to 14.
While there may be some suggestion that teams of meteors may harbor bigger, doubtlessly hazardous objects, for the massive half meteors merely fritter away in our environment if they’re unfortunate sufficient to fall into it. However, as captured by Daichi Fujii, astronomer and curator of the Hiratsuka City Museum in Japan, a few of them could as a substitute collide with our moon.
“There was another lunar impact flash tonight. I filmed it at 360fps from my home at 22:34:35 on December 8, 2024 (slow playback) and was able to confirm it with multiple telescopes,” Fujii explained on X, in keeping with the interpretation. “Bright meteors and fireballs have been showing daily, however lunar influence flashes have additionally been captured one after one other.”
Fujii captured different potential meteors hitting the Moon on earlier nights.
While the Geminids seem a likely cause of the impact, that’s not altogether clear.
“Given the position of the radiant, there is a possibility that these lunar impact flashes are associated with the Geminid meteor shower,” Robert Lunsford of the American Meteor Society told EarthSky. “However, since sporadic meteors nonetheless outnumber Geminids in ground-based meteor observations, they could be sporadic meteors.”
Whatever the article was, we’re certain we will all agree it was fairly. Further examples, in addition to views of meteors hitting the Earth’s environment, can be found on Fujii’s X web page.
