Small Asteroid Impacts Moon

Re:Small Asteroid Impacts Moon by marginalia_nu on Sunday March 12, 2023 @09:06AM (#35119613)

Are we sure it didn't just kick up dust into the sunlight?

Looks like the sun might have been just below the horizon.

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Re:Small Asteroid Impacts Moon by gibmeat on Sunday March 12, 2023 @09:34AM (#35119869)

I thought about this too, but if it were dust, I'm guessing it wouldn't dissipate in 1 second.

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Re:Small Asteroid Impacts Moon by marginalia_nu on Sunday March 12, 2023 @10:25AM (#35120398)

Seems like atmospheric intuition.

I'd expect high velocity dust to diffuse rather quickly in near vacuum.

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Re:Small Asteroid Impacts Moon by icehawk on Sunday March 12, 2023 @11:38AM (#35121358)

Here's a 2.8km/sec dust cloud from DART for comparison:

https://www.virtualtelescope.eu/wordpress/wp-content/uploads...

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Re:Small Asteroid Impacts Moon by op00to on Sunday March 12, 2023 @10:16AM (#35120297)

If it kicked up dust, would the dust keep going, or would the Moon’s gravity pull it back to the lunar surface quickly? I have no idea.

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Re:Small Asteroid Impacts Moon by cornstalks on Sunday March 12, 2023 @11:17AM (#35121049)

The moon’s escape velocity is 2.38 km/s (5324 miles/hour), so it just depends on whether or not the material reached escape velocity or not.

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Re:Small Asteroid Impacts Moon by op00to on Monday March 13, 2023 @08:25AM (#35134753)

Thank you for this! Totally made it click in my head.

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Re:Small Asteroid Impacts Moon by ktm5j on Sunday March 12, 2023 @05:42PM (#35126665)

In my layman opinion a dust cloud would at very least stick around for much longer than the duration that we see this glowing last. There has to be something else responsible for the flash imo.

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