Overview
- Daichi Fujii recorded bright impact flashes on Oct. 30 at 20:33:13.4 JST and Nov. 1 at 20:49:19.4 JST, capturing the events at 270 frames per second.
- The first flash occurred east of Gassendi crater and the second west of Oceanus Procellarum, each visible for a fraction of a second from Earth.
- Fujii estimates the Oct. 30 meteoroid was ~0.2 kilograms traveling ~27 km/s, producing a crater about three meters wide with a ~0.1-second flash.
- The timing aligns with the Northern and Southern Taurid meteor streams, and other telescopes in Japan recorded the bursts from different angles.
- An ESA engineer said the flashes appear genuine and unusually energetic, and scientists are now looking to LRO imagery to confirm fresh craters and update impact-rate models; Fujii has documented about 60 lunar flashes since 2011.