Australian scientists from the University of New South Wales and the Anglo-Australian Observatory imaged the impact of the Japanese Kayuga/Selene spacecraft on the moon on June 10.
This series of 4 images was taken by Jeremy Bailey and Steve Lee using the 3.9m telescope at the Siding Spring Observatory near Coonabarrabran in NSW. Each image is a 1 second exposure with a 0.6 second dead time between images. The impact occurred at 18:25:10 UT on June 10. This can be seen brightly in the second frame, and still faintly in the 3rd and 4th frames.
The bright area in the left hand top corner is the sunlit area of the Moon. The terminator is the imaginary line that separates the sunlit from the dark(night) areas of the lunar surface. As can be seen, this is not a straight line because of the varying topography. The bright oval shaped area is a crater that extends higher than the surrounding area, and thus reflects the Sun's rays.
The images were taken with the IRIS-2 infrared camera and were made using a narrow band filter centered at a wavelength of 2.3 microns.
Image credit:
University of New South Wales/Anglo-Australian Observatory (J. Bailey and S. Lee)
Jeremy Bailey - June 11th 2009