Twin telescopes record video of meteoroid slamming into the moon

Last September, a pair of telescopes from a project called MIDAS (Moon Impacts Detection and Analysis System) did what they were designed for and monitored the blast from a meteoroid plowing into the lunar surface. This isn't the first time we've seen this happen, but this particular blast was the brightest ever detected, and the afterglow of the impact continued for eight seconds, as material that had vaporized in the blast cooled off. Now, the researchers have published a description of the event and placed video of it on YouTube.

The MIDAS project, which attempts to monitor the lunar surface for impacts, may seem like a dry academic pursuit. But it's actually relevant to human safety. We don't have a strong sense of the rate at which small bodies slam into the Earth, and it's difficult to monitor the entire Earth's atmosphere (done through projects called "fireball networks"). In contrast, it's relatively easy to monitor large areas of the unlit surface of the moon during many of its phases and to extrapolate from the rate of impacts to the rate at which the Earth must be getting struck.

(The MIDAS team uses two telescopes in case some form of noise causes a flash in one of the cameras, but they're less than a meter in size and are from a manufacturer that sells directly to consumers.)