Kaguya Moon crash seen from Earth

Astronomers using one of the world's largest telescopes captured the brilliant explosion as the Kaguya spacecraft slammed into the Moon. Jeremy Bailey and colleague Steve Lee used the 3.9-metre (153-inch) Anglo-Australian Telescope in New South Wales to record a bright flash marking the impact of the Japan space agency JAXA's robotic probe. The crash, at around 4.25am local time today in New South Wales, happened on the unlit, dark side of the Moon , close to the edge of the side illuminated by sunlight, called the terminator.

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/b9f962655809.jpg[/atsimg]
www.scientificamerican.com...

Wow, they were lucky to catch that image then.. unless they had it very well plotted..

It's incredible how the pure energy of the impact caused the explosion.. don't make sense to me, but I guess there is some scientific facts to that.

but this is interesting;

NASA is due to launch a new unmanned probe next Wednesday that will fire a missile into a crater near the Moon's south pole in October.

What's up? Can't they use dowsing rods, or more scientific methods instead of bombing the heck out of some crater..

Unless of course there is something more deeply interesting going on.. but who can say

Hmm, it doesn't quite make sense to me that an impact would cause an explosion in a vaccum. I could understand if some gas were quickly compressed by the sandwiching action of the craft on the moon, there shouldn't be any gas there though.

I have a weak understanding of physics though, so I'm sure there's a reason.

It is interesting how much attention is now be focused on the surface of the moon after all these years. I think it is long overdue. Cool pictures, are the any better ones than those?

reply to post by Mr Headshot


I dont think its an "explosion" per se, but it does have to do with the kinetic energy turning into heat energy. Hope it helps!

Thank you for the images, I was wondering if there would be any, and here they are.

I'm looking for further images just in case there are some that are better quality, but just a bit more info for you who enjoy this;

This is a partial map of the moon and the predicted crash site marked with a red star. As to the exact location it would seem that it was fairly close by seeing as it was just into the dark side.. hhmmm.. that's a thought.. if it was on the dark side, how did they get the telescope to take the picture? Or did they mean to report that it was in a portion of the moon that was still in darkness due to its phase.. I'll have to check to see what phase the moon is currently in..
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/24cd9a32f2a5.jpg[/atsimg]
www.pinktentacle.com...
Found some videos too... thought I'd add them as well

reply to post by Mr Headshot

On Earth, the interaction with the surrounding matter, be it air, water, or whatever, means that the initial energy is very quickly, in a few milliseconds, spread out over a fairly large amount of matter, no matter what the nature of the explosive. This material, typically air, forms a luminous fireball that expands at the speed of sound in the air that has been heated by the explosion, which is faster than the speed of sound in ordinary cool air. The result is a shock wave at the surface of the fireball. As the fireball expands it compresses and heats the surrounding air, while losing energy by radiation and also because of the work it is doing on the outside air, all of which causes it to cool. Eventually it cools to the point where it is no longer luminous, the shock wave moves out ahead and makes the BANG! that we hear and that may knock down buildings, and a cloud of swirling debris, smoke, and maybe brownish nitrogen oxides are left behind.

In space, the first few milliseconds proceed as they would in air (say), but then the transfer of energy to the surrounding air never takes place. As a result the initial small, intensely hot fireball simply keeps expanding at very high speed, and the expanding gases and any fragments fly off in straight lines. The fireball cools by radiation at first, but as its density drops it becomes so transparent that radiation is suppressed. For a chemical high explosive, the expansion speed would be a few thousand feet per second. So for a moderate size explosive -- say 1 meter across -- the products will expand to 100 meters in probably less than 0.1 sec, meaning the density will have decreased by a factor of a million, and the visible explosion will effectively be over. Visually the effect would be of a very brief, brilliant flash in a region only a little bigger than the actual extent of the explosive material. Of course there would be no billowing swirling smoke, and any fragments would almost certainly be moving too fast to be visible. The effect would probably be something like that of a big flashbulb.

For a nuclear explosion, the fireball would radiate mainly in the x-ray and ultraviolet, which are not visible to the eye, although the visible part of the radiation would produce a blue-white flash. The expansion speed would be many hundreds or thousands of times faster than for a chemical explosion, so that the time scale would be less than a millisecond. All the material near the source would be vaporized, so there would be no fragments. If the explosion was truly in space, and not in a tenuous atmosphere, then viewed from a survivable distance the effect would probably be similar to, but even less spectacular than, a chemical explosion.

There is one account of a nuclear explosion in the public literature that I know, that of the 1 Megaton "Starfish" explosion in 1962 over Johnston Is. in the South Pacific. Because it was not really in space, but in the upper atmosphere a few hundred km high, it created a ghostly fireball hundreds of km in extent, much less brilliant than in air, but still "a fearsome sight" (according to Bernard J. O'Keefe, "Nuclear Hostages", 1983).

www.wwheaton.com...

Hope that helps your inquiry into explosions in a vacuum.

Could the location of the impact have been chosen as a weapon against any alien lifeforms located on the Moon? What better way then to tell them we can strike against them at will in their secret moon bases.

reply to post by Rob37n


LOL, if that is the best they can do is crash a multimillion dollar probe into the surface I highly doubt any advanced race will look at any different than we would some primitive throwing rocks at a helicopter,annoying but no threat. Or we could liken it to a 9/11 type event, we don't have any good technology for space warfare, so like the terrorists we just crash whatever we can into something doing nothing more but pissing off a major power.

reply to post by jkrog08


I know, I was trying to be more conspiratorial and such

Worlds most powerful telescope captures images that look like something off a mobile phone would see, should be the headline.

AGAIN

Another cover-up. This is not the full story. Think people think.

Does it not make you think - why build a craft that cannot be returned to our planet? Why crash it? Maybe this is a strike at the inhabitants of the moon? Maybe this could be a reason for a staged invasion.

wZn

reply to post by watchZEITGEISTnow


Is it not more possible that they simply didn't want to clutter the orbital space around the moon with a dead probe?

Originally posted by watchZEITGEISTnow

Why crash it? Maybe this is a strike at the inhabitants of the moon?

Didn't I say this? Did I not suggest this could be the case?

I swear I am like some kind of invisible ninja, invisible to the world, difficult for a 6ft 2in 300lb guy you might think, but I can speak, write, or other, and not one person takes a blind bit of notice.

Maybe I've passed over and nobody noticed, including me!

reply to post by jkrog08


Hey maybe - then why would they not take hi res images of the thing crashing like the Rangers? Why again, did they not have huge hi res camera footage of this from they could study (what exactly are they trying to archive by doing that anyway? - why not just set it for a infinite course into infinite space?

It is a waste of time, energy, experiment, logic to CRASH something into the moon as junk. I want proper answers not some quasi-geek-space agency speak. We should all demand what the heck they are doing to our moon.

The mere fact we have seen VERY LITTLE from the camera experts of the world (Japan) and their hi-tech craft - MUST set off red flags about anything else they are doing up there.

wZn

reply to post by Rob37n


lol well ninjas are supposed to be invisible "stealth" like. And ninjas are from Japan - and yes I think you are thinking outside the box, and yes you may have just inspired me to write that.

So thanks for raising the bar in not believing everything we are spoon fed.



wZn

Originally posted by watchZEITGEISTnow
Worlds most powerful telescope captures images that look like something off a mobile phone would see, should be the headline.

It's not the worlds most powerful telescope. And the images in the opening post are most likely cropped from a larger original image.

...why build a craft that cannot be returned to our planet? Why crash it?

Orbiting probes sent to other planets are never designed to return. There is nothing to gain by doing that. All that would do is make the probe heavier at launch, due to the added fuel for a return trip.

As for why they crashed it. It would have done so by itself eventually, so better to do it in a controlled manner and do a last bit of science with it. Scientists will study the dust that was kicked up by the impact.

why not just set it for a infinite course into infinite space?

Because it wasn't designed for that in mind.