Explosion on the Moon!

Pock-marked with craters and splotched with long-cold beds of dark lava, our moon holds thousands of footprints from its violent past. But we don’t really think of it having a violent present.

Well, it still gets its fair share of action. On March 17, 2013, NASA astronomers captured video of a meteorite striking the moon. It made an explosion bright enough to be seen with the naked eye, like a temporary star drawn on the lunar surface. It turns out that these collisions are not that rare.

Most of the moon’s many meteor marks date from a period known as the Late Heavy Bombardment. That, combined with a magma-riffic adolescence gave the moon the special look we know today. Of course, none of that is as violent as the moon’s birth.

Anyway, make sure to watch that video above and see the meteor strike live. You’ll never look at the moon the same way again.

Fireball/Meteor Over California/Nevada: How Big Was It? On Sunday morning, April 22, an enormous explosion occurred over the Sierra Nevadas, rattling windows in California and Nevada. The culprit? A meteor disintegrating in the atmosphere, as captured above by a lucky skywatcher.  NASA has estimated the size of the object at 70 metric tons, and the explosion was the equivalent of one quarter the nuclear weapon that detonated over Hiroshima. As meteor events go, this was a big one. It’s unclear whether any fragments may have made it back to Earth. It’s likely that the explosion didn’t completely obliterate the whole rock, but there’s no way of knowing how big remaining fragments might be. Considering that the explosion occurred fairly high in the atmosphere, you’d have to comb an area the size of maybe Connecticut in order to search for leftovers. I’m sure locals are looking, though.  For more details, check out NASA’s release and map of the explosion location. (ᔥ NASA)
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Fireball/Meteor Over California/Nevada: How Big Was It?

On Sunday morning, April 22, an enormous explosion occurred over the Sierra Nevadas, rattling windows in California and Nevada. The culprit? A meteor disintegrating in the atmosphere, as captured above by a lucky skywatcher. 

NASA has estimated the size of the object at 70 metric tons, and the explosion was the equivalent of one quarter the nuclear weapon that detonated over Hiroshima. As meteor events go, this was a big one.

It’s unclear whether any fragments may have made it back to Earth. It’s likely that the explosion didn’t completely obliterate the whole rock, but there’s no way of knowing how big remaining fragments might be. Considering that the explosion occurred fairly high in the atmosphere, you’d have to comb an area the size of maybe Connecticut in order to search for leftovers. I’m sure locals are looking, though. 

For more details, check out NASA’s release and map of the explosion location.

(ᔥ NASA)

Source: nasa.gov