Posted on 01/05/2007 12:31:14 PM PST by blam
Geminid meteors seen striking the Moon
17:13 05 January 2007
NewScientist.com news service
Kelly Young
Two small NASA telescopes with their lenses trained on the Moon spied five, and possibly six, Geminid meteoroids striking the lunar surface early on the morning of 14 December. The observations will help NASA design safe shelters for its future Moon base.
On Earth, most meteors burn up as they crash through the atmosphere. The Moon's atmosphere is negligible, however, so the largest of the space rocks crash into its surface with the force of 8-tonne bombs.
"We hope to learn how often big rocks crash into the Moon since we're sending astronauts back," says Bill Cooke, of the Meteoroid Environment Office at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, US.
A crewed lunar base would have to be well shielded, given that meteoroids could be travelling at about 35 kilometres per second (see Preventing the sky falling in on Moon bases).
The concern is not really for the softball-sized projectiles hitting the astronauts directly, Cooke says, but rather from the material scattered from the resulting crater. Because of the Moon's lower gravity and thin atmosphere, material could fly for hundreds of metres. Cooke likens the ejecta to shrapnel from a bomb.
Ideal conditions
To find the impacts, NASA's twin 36-centimetre-wide telescopes, located at the Automated Lunar and Meteor Observatory (ALaMO) at Marshall, look for flashes of light on the unlit part of the Moon.
(Excerpt) Read more at space.newscientist.com ...
Could the answer be 5 or 6 times on some days?
The kinetic energy can easily exceed the explosive potential of that amount of TNT. Do not scorn kinetic energy!
Can entropy be reversed?
Is "none" negligible?
Build UNDERGROUND...............
Yes, it will be in the Big Crunch!.........
No other way.
My job had a 'ringside seat' view of the Geminids.
Unfortunately, we also had cloud cover that night.
Of course, it happens during a part of every engine cycle.
When in doubt ask Asimov!
And the computer said,"Let there be light!"...And there was light..........Asimov.........
Saw the Geminids in the bleakest part of West Texas one year. Absolutely and simply indescribable, even for one whose vocabulary is as awe inspiring as mine. (joke, joke) I'm astounded that traveling to remote parts of the country to see such things isn't as popular and unremarkable as going to Disney World.
You still need to know how deep to make the trenches, but there is a cutoff point where it does not matter- imagine being at ground zero when Tycho was made!
Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)
I've had the rotten luck of being stuck in the southern portion of 'upstate NY'...
Meaning Southern NY to the 'rest of the country'.
Why is this rotten?
Because for the past 8 years there has been rain, fog, or some form of weather interfering with visibility every time there is a meteor shower.
I got lucky once and saw comet Hyakutake.
What's the minimum amount of "gas" that has to be present to be considered "atmosphere"?
There's evidence of earlier outgassing on the lunar surface.
Did any of the Apollo missions think to bring back samples of the atmosphere?
You probably already know this, but even if it weren't foggy, etc., you get poor visibility because of city lights. Go to the remote regions and it is something you will NEVER forget. I rank it right up there with seeing the Grand Canyon.
I'm in the cow country area of southern NY, Orange County section.
Plenty of darker areas there.
But... the weather stinks.
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