On 2/24/2014 10:11 AM, Warren D Smith wrote:
Since 2005, NASA's moon impact-monitoring program has observed more than 300 meteorite strikes on the lunar surface as visible flashes. But I presume they can only detect (in this way) flashes on the part of the moon facing the Earth and not facing the sun.
I.e. on the visible, dark part of the Moon. But I think they can be seen on the lighted part too. There's a lot of energy and the impact creates a hot plasma which would be spectrally very different from reflected sunlight. Brent
The largest was 11 Sept 2013 and dug a crater about 40 meters in diameter. It was thought to be due to a 400 kg rock traveling at 17 km/sec and the flash would have been easily visible with the naked eye (if you were looking and it was night). Allegedly: Rock diameter 0.6 to 1.4 meters; energy 15 tons TNT. Obviously, it was a plot by Al Qaida.