Papers › Location, orbit and energy of a meteoroid impacting the moon during the Lunar Eclipse...
Location, orbit and energy of a meteoroid impacting the moon during the Lunar Eclipse of January 21, 2019
Jorge I. Zuluaga, Matipon Tangmatitham, Pablo A. Cuartas-Restrepo, Jonathan Ospina, Fritz Pichardo, Sergio A. Lopez, Karls Pena, J. Mauricio Gaviria-Posada
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During lunar eclipse of January 21, 2019 a meteoroid impacted the Moon producing a visible light flash. The impact was witnessed by casual observers offering an opportunity to study the phenomenon from multiple geographical locations. We use images and videos collected by observers in 7 countries to estimate the location, impact parameters (speed and incoming direction) and energy of the meteoroid. Using parallax, we achieve determining the impact location at lat. -29.43^(+0.30)_(-0.21), lon. -67.89^(+0.07)_(-0.09) and geocentric distance as 356553 km. After devising and applying a photo-metric procedure for measuring flash standard magnitudes in multiple RGB images having different exposure times, we found that the flash, had an average G-magnitude ⟨G⟩= 6.7±0.3. We use gravitational ray tracing (GRT) to estimate the orbital properties and likely radiant of the impactor. We find that the meteoroid impacted the moon with a speed of 14⁺⁷₋₆ km/s (70% C.L.) and at a shallow angle, θ< 38.2 degrees. Assuming a normal error for our estimated flash brightness, educated priors for the luminous efficiency and object density, and using the GRT-computed probability distributions of impact speed and incoming directions, we calculate posterior probability distributions for the kinetic energy (median K_(med) = 0.8 kton), body mass (M_(med) = 27 kg) and diameter (d_(med) = 29 cm), and crater size (D_(med) = 9 m). If our assumptions are correct, the crater left by the impact could be detectable by prospecting lunar probes. These results arose from a timely collaboration between professional and amateur astronomers which highlight the potential importance of citizen science in astronomy.
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