An astronomer at Armagh Observatory and Planetarium (AOP) has captured what is believed to be the first video recording of a lunar impact flash made from the island of Ireland. The event, only the second recorded in the UK, was captured by Andrew Marshall-Lee, a final-year PhD student, on Friday using the Armagh Robotic Telescope (ART).
Lunar impact flashes are rare events, more likely to be detected during major meteor showers when the Moon passes through streams of debris left by comets and asteroids. Marshall-Lee explained that these are typically very small objects, no bigger than a golf ball, travelling at around 35 kilometres per second. When they hit the Moon, the immense energy vaporises everything, causing a flash of light.
Marshall-Lee has been working on the project for almost three years. He stressed the importance of mapping where micrometeoroids strike the lunar surface, particularly for future missions. 'If we were to put a telescope on the moon or a mission of some kind, we wouldn't want it to get smashed by these meteorites,' he said, adding that the work contributes to a larger European Space Agency (ESA) mission.
The observation presented considerable challenges, requiring a dark side of the Moon and clear skies, both rare in the UK and Ireland. 'It has really proven to be a challenging observation,' Marshall-Lee noted. He was fortunate to witness the flash directly: 'I was very fortunate in that I just so happened to be looking at the screen at the right time and I saw it happen with my own eyes.'
His next steps will be to determine the object's size, speed, and origin, with the assumption that it came from the Geminid meteor shower, which was at its peak during the observation. The footage is expected to contribute valuable data to lunar science and future exploration efforts.
