FROM DAILY MAIL: Two mysterious flashes have been spotted on the moon’s surface, sparking a debate over what just struck our nearest neighbor in the solar system.
Astronomer Daichi Fujii, curator of the Hiratsuka City Museum in Japan, captured the first of these bright flashes on October 30, revealing a large round dot briefly illuminating the moon’s surface before disappearing.
The second flash was spotted two days later, on November 1, near the moon’s horizon from Fujii’s perspective here on Earth.
The flashes are likely caused by space rocks from the passing Taurid meteor shower impacting the moon’s surface.
“With my 20cm telescope, I typically detect about one impact flash every few dozen hours of observation,” he told Space.com. “Because the thin crescent moon is visible only briefly and often low in the sky where thin clouds are common, I only observe a few dozen flashes per year.”
This means these back-to-back impacts are rare.
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