Perseid Lunar Impact Observing Opportunity

[Tony Cook]

Tonight and tomorrow night (11/12 & 12/13th Aug) there are good opportunities to video the Perseids striking the N/NE/E limb of the earthlit Moon. The phase of the Moon is very small, being a crescent, so there should not be too much interfering glare. The downside is that these are early morning observations. From the UK (depending upon where you live) on the 12th the Moon rises at approx 00:00 UT or 01:00 BST, and twilight will fry-up visibility of earthshine by approx 04:00UT. But at least the Moon gains high altitude. The rise time of the Moon on the 13th is approx 1h later. You can try the 14th as well, but there is less time to monitor earthshine & the Moon will be low in the sky anyway.

You can use any camera so long as it can record the limb of the earthlit Moon (and hopefully more detail) in a single frame, and you can achieve frame rates of at least 10 frames per sec. Place the camera at Newtonian focus (use a focal reducer if you have a high f/No. SCT or refractor).

Further observing details, and links to software to detect flashes from video, can be found on my Uni Web site:
https://users.aber.ac.uk/atc/flash/lifs.pdf

Please email me the date and start and end UTs of any video observations you make (even if you detect no impacts) as well as images of any flashes that you may detect.

So far there have been only two detections of lunar impact flashes from the UK – lets see if we can increase this total!

Tony Cook (BAA Lunar Section Director & LUMIO mission Citizen Science Coordinator)

P.S. There are some occultations (reappearances) on these nights as too – see if you can video these as it is useful to calibrate
any flashes against stars of known mags + they will be useful for Tim Haymes our occultation coordinator:

yy mmm dd hh mm ss star Sp mv mr CA or angle away from pole
23 Aug 12 1 36 52.6 77961 B8 8.6 8.6 40S
23 Aug 12 2 17 14.0 927 G0 8.0 7.7 60N
23 Aug 12 2 54 24.0 78041 G5 7.8 7.3 51S
23 Aug 13 2 47 36.8 1075 G0 8.5 8.2 77N
23 Aug 13 2 54 18.5 79022 K0 8.0 7.6 62S

Note that these predictions are for an observer in the UK with E. Longitude -1deg 19min, Latitude +51deg 56min, so expect a few min variations from UK shores

[Tony Cook]

Weve had reports of candidate impact flashes on 2023 Aug 13 UT:

00:50:05
02:28:03
02:29:01

by observers in Central Europe – if you did observe, please check your video recordings at these times
and let me know what you find.

All reports are provisional until they are confirmed by another observer and may have other explanations e.g. aircraft strobes etc.

Thanks

Tony

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