People on ARocket list reported using a telescope to watch flashes of light
on the moon as meteorites struck.
Their calculations indicate energies around a ton of high explosive. Quite
an interesting way to watch meteorites.


RM

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At 10:38 AM 12/08/2001, Henry Spencer wrote:

>On Sat, 8 Dec 2001, Troy Prideaux wrote:
> > Yep, actually what's also interesting is how we (on Earth) could see
tiny
> > flashes of light on the moon with 6" & 8" telescopes during the recent
> > meteor shower...
>
>That one is less of a mystery:  the Leonids come in *very* fast, 60-70km/s.
>They carry far more energy per kilogram than a mere satellite.

Well, 70 km/sec is 10x what I was using for LEO (7700 m/sec less the
beanstalk's velocity, less a bit more to be nice to Pierce), so that's 100x
the energy.  Which bumps the conversion factor up to 600x, so Troy's 1-2 kg
meteoroids (those are big meteoroids!) have the energy of 600 to 1200 kg of
TNT.  I'd buy seeing that explosion from the moon through an 8" telescope
at high magnification, if the impact was on the night side and the day side
was kept out of the field of view.

Pretty cool.

"Whatcha lookin at, dude?"
"Leonids..."
"With a telescope?"
"...On the moon."

-R


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Randall Clague                                rclague@rclague.net

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