Fireworks on the Moon
Even though we didn’t get to have fireworks this year, there’s a much more exclusive show happening on our nearest neighbor, the Moon.
The Moon’s surface is littered with impact craters left behind from millennia of collisions with meteors and sometimes even asteroids. And that surface is still being bombarded with debris and continuously changing to this day. While most of the impacts are microscopic meteoroids, occasionally we’re treated to a fiery explosive impact.
Since 2006, NASA has been continuously monitoring the surface of the Moon through its Lunar Impact Monitoring Program, and has witnessed a few hundred impacts bright enough to be visible to the unaided eye, if you were lucky enough to be looking at the right place at the right time. The heat generated upon impact produces a bright flash that’s picked up by a network of cameras, and now you too can view these recordings!
While this celestial firework display is exceedingly rare, NASA maintains a gallery of impact flashes, you can learn more about it here.
It’s a great reminder that something as seemingly timeless as the Moon is constantly undergoing gradual changes, changes that will be visible for millennia and that future generations will appreciate in the same way.
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