Out With A Tiny Bang

The SMART-1 spacecraft has impacted the moon ( at 05:42.15 GMT) and as expected a small flash was observed at the impact site.

Here's a gif animation of the event captured by the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope at Mauna Kea. It only appears on one frame, so don't blink or you'll miss it!



















This animation is made up of 10-second exposures with an infra-red camera. It covers approximately 200km X 200km of the lunar surface. The impact flash itself measures about 5km in diameter.

That's quite a show for a 300kg spacecraft coming to a skippy stop, but I don't know how bright that flash looks like in the visible light spectrum. Even through a large amateur telescope (12") it might only look like a quick, tiny spark. I suspect most amateur observers may have missed it.

Still, if I find a nice visible light impact image I will put it up here for you. Yessy!