Watch a Meteor Smack the Blood Moon in This Lunar Eclipse Video!

[Judi Lynn]

By Meghan Bartels, Space.com Senior Writer | January 22, 2019 01:00pm ET

This weekend's stunning lunar eclipse seems to have come with a little extra flash, thanks to a brilliant coincidence — a burst of light at about the time totality began, marking the end of a meteorite's journey to the moon.

The meteor strike takes place in the region darkened by Earth's shadow, as you can see in videos of the eclipse.

There's no reason to worry. The moon regularly suffers impacts; the collisions are how the lunar surface acquires an average of 140 new craters a year — and that tally only includes those more than 32.8 feet (10 meters) across.[Amazing Photos of the Super Blood Wolf Moon!]

Scientists are sometimes lucky enough to have instruments in the right place at the right time to catch the flash of light accompanying the high-speed impact. (A Spanish telescope caught sight of two such impacts in quick succession in July 2018.) But this impact came as people around the world looked to the sky — and livestreamed telescope broadcasts — to watch the total lunar eclipse, the last until 2021.

More:
https://www.space.com/43075-blood-moon-2019-meteor-impact-video.html

[Cracklin Charlie]

1. Kick

Can’t watch now

[CaliforniaPeggy]

2. Wow--so quick but still pretty bright! And small too. n/t

[Bok_Tukalo]

3. What if someone is stuck

And they figured the best time to signal was when they knew half of North America would be watching?

Still not convinced Elon Musk didn’t put someone in that Tesla he launched into space.

[Ptah]

4. Youtube link:

[Judi Lynn]

5. Thank you, Ptah! n/t

[Shoonra]

6. Meteorites, or something else?

I am surprised that a meteorite would produce a flash of light on the Moon, because there is no atmosphere that would create atmospheric friction to light up a meteorite. Could these flashes be something other than meteorites? Or is it possible that there is a sort of residual atmosphere on the Moon that could cause this friction and thereby indicate that the Moon once had a more substantial atmosphere?

[SCantiGOP]

7. That's a damn good question

Depictions of flaming explosions in outer space are not accurate scientifically because the only oxygen that could support a fireball would be what was in a spacecraft.
I would think a meteorite impact would just be a dusty plume.

Anybody out there care to weigh in?

[muriel_volestrangler]

8. The Moon's escape velocity is 2.3 km/s - over 5000 mph

so that's the speed anything just 'falling' onto the Moon would build up. A meteorite could hit the Moon at an even larger speed than that, depending on the relative velocity of it and the Moon in their motion around the Sun. The energy involved in a collision of 2 hard objects at those speeds is easily enough to produce light (which doesn't just come from things burning, or friction with an atmosphere).