Astronomers believe they provide vital intel for our plans to one day colonise the moon
THIS is the chilling moment two eerie flashes erupt from the surface of the moon around Halloween.
Telescopes trained on the moon captured sparks of light pricking the otherwise still, dark surface – and now experts have explained what’s going on.
The first flash was noticed last week – followed by another one over the weekend.
Whilst they look like bolts of energy erupting from inside the moon, scientists have explained they are actually objects flying into it.
Both were the result of asteroids smashing holes into the moon at 60,000mph.
Space rocks are constantly flying around at insane speeds – and the moon does not have an atmosphere to slow them down.
That means that any projectile on a collision course with the moon will dart straight into it, rather than burning up as they would on Earth.
It’s not clear how big the asteroids were, but we do know they were pelting along at 30 times the speed of a fighter jet.
When they strike solid rock at that speed, it causes an almighty explosion – hence the outbursts of light.
But the explosions are not the only fallout from the high speed smash.
The rocks will also have punched two new craters into the lunar surface – which explains why the moon is so pockmarked.
Both were captured by Daichi Fujii, a curator at the Hiratsuka City Museum in Japan, who keeps his telescope lenses trained on small rocky neighbour.
He spotted the first on Thursday at 8:33pm local time, and the other on Saturday at 8:49pm.
Mr Fujii told the New York Times: “I want the public to enjoy science.”
The astronomical enthusiast keeps several telescopes in two locations: Fuji and Hiratsuka.
Ingeniously, he has set up his software so that it automatically detects explosions on the moon’s surface – meaning he can sit back be alerted whenever something interesting happens.
He has captured around 60 of these impacts since 2011, but insists it is rare for two to come in such quick succession.
The European Space Agency’s telescopes missed the action because the moon was too bright when looking from the continent.
But because several telescopes in Japan caught the same glimmers from different angles, it’s easy to call them asteroid strikes.
Juan Luis Cano, an aerospace engineer with the European Space Agency’s Near-Earth Object Coordination Centre, told the NYT: “Those impact flashes seem real.
“What caught my eye is that they both seem to be somewhat above the average in terms of flash size.”
Mr Fuji thinks the speeding space rocks could have come from the Taurid meteor shower.
This is a collection of large, high-speed rocks which Earth and the moon pass through once every 3.3 years.
Source: https://www.the-sun.com/tech/15448920/two-eerie-flashes-surface-moon/
