Overview
- High-speed video since the 1990s has confirmed that millisecond-to-second flashes are meteoroid impacts, with early multi-station detections during the 1999 Leonids.
- ESA’s NELIOTA program has recorded 193 confirmed lunar impact flashes over nine years, and a 2024 analysis found an almost homogeneous distribution rather than true hotspots.
- Minute-long glows are plausibly tied to radon gas outgassing triggered by moonquakes, as supported by peer-reviewed studies from 2008 and 2009.
- Hours-long sightings remain disputed, with proposed explanations ranging from solar-wind–charged dust scattering starlight to common misidentifications such as satellites crossing the lunar disk.
- To avoid false positives from camera noise, researchers require simultaneous detections from multiple sites, improving meteoroid flux estimates relevant to protecting spacecraft and future lunar bases.