That just-boosted article indicates that a #NearEarthAsteroid, which looked like it might hit #theMoon in 2032, has now been more precisely clocked by the #Webb telescope and it'll likely miss.
This reminds me of a dramatic astronomical thing I once saw live as it happened.
I'd even go so far as to say I could be one of the only humans to have ever witnessed such an event in real time!
Mini thread!
1/?
I'm trying to work out when it happened.
Best guess is that it was August or September of either 1977, 78 or 79. Because I was outside with my recently acquired telescope, in the darkness, but it wasn't cold.
In the north where I lived as a kid, summers are bright until nearly 11pm, and I don't think it was that late. So late summer is likely.
I was looking at the moon with my 3 inch refractor, a smallish lens, and a 90° prism, with the moon high up, maybe 50° above the horizon.
2/
I was practicing tracking the moon, with the two axis adjuster knobs on the cheapo azimuthal mount, i was keeping the lower central area of the moon in my view.
It was very clear, bright and sharp, with lots of cool craters and shadows to see.
Suddenly, like a rock skipping across a lake, I saw a mark appear, headed "northward" across the face of the moon!
I gasped in shock, not sure what I'd seen.
3/
I ran in to tell someone, siblings or my mom, I don't recall. The reaction was disinterest, as if I'd said the most boring thing, like 'a bird flew past the house.' No interest, no reaction.
Seeing it, I recall being struck by the silence. It felt like something so dramatic should've made a noise, as absurd as I knew that to be. Funny that that was my first thought.
So I'd seen a thing so dramatic, yet there was nothing I could do with it. Nobody to tell, no Internet, no video!
4/
Haven't searched on the topic for a while, but I recall that I was previously unable to find an account of anyone else ever seeing a lunar impact in real time. There are before/after pics of impact areas of course.
I often wonder which craters are 'my' craters. It would prob be hard to figure out now, but would be fun to some day look through archival photos from that period and see if I could determine where and when the impact happened.
fin.
5/5
@Heinke oh yes I've seen the accounts of light flashes from high energy impacts caught by automated telescopes and such. Those are very fast moving objects
I'm assuming what I saw must've been a much lower energy object to have not flashed, so maybea rock that was already orbiting the moon and decayed into the surface; anything else would've produced the flash. I suppose early probe bits would've been over there then, seeing that would be pretty improbable, but certainly cool 😊
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