Using Your Telescope to Photograph Explosions on the Moon

Using Your Telescope to Photograph Explosions on the Moon

Chris Pirillo Is Home Inventory Delicious? Can Marriage be Saved without Talking about It? How to Find YouTube Videos in Violation of Copyright Where do you Download Desktop Wallpaper?Using Your Telescope to Photograph Explosions on the Moon

After reading, my first question was: How often is the moon getting hit? After doing some short research, I’ve learned that apparently it happens every day on the Moon. Then, I wanted to know since Earth is only about 240,000 miles away from the Moon, why Earth never gets hit with this kind of stuff. So, I read on a little further and learned that it’s because of Earth’s atmosphere. It would tear up something like that before it ever reached the ground. But since the moon has no atmosphere, it gets hit all the time. Yeah, I don’t think I’m going to go visit the moon any time soon. Could you imagine getting hit with a rock 10 meters in width that was traveling at 85,000mph?

Are there parts of the surface of the moon that don’t get hit by these asteroids? It would be good to know if sometime in the future a colony was going to be established.

I would need an attachment for my telescope to record it for long periods of time, but just looking at the moon through my light-bucket, is good enough for me. MORE NASA ARTICLES :P

When I did have a nice telescope, I remember trying to see craters on the moon. I also would occasionally see flashes of light just like those on the video! I didn’t realize that those might have been meteorites. I thought it was just distortion in the lens.

I haven’t tried.. but man.. it looks cool to try. Maybe hook up a HD camera to the telescope to record it instead of a regular camera

Opps.. I mean HD camcorder.

It looks like its time to dust off my telescope and drive out to the country someplace. Sounds interesting.

It too makes me wonder how the world gets missed, but I do know it happens quite often, usually little rocks. Unless they’re absorbed by the Earths atmosphere. It would be nice to have a space rock come flying into the garden, as it would sell for millions :)

I wanna try it tonight :)
I have a Meade 750PE, a REALLY great telescope. The PE edition gives you ultra-high-transmission-coating so you can see tiny stuff like this really clearly. Can’t wait :)

Is that picture of an actual asteroid hitting the moon? Chris, you have showed me yet another reason I want to go to space, good one! :P

We have nice telescope. We used it a bit before packing it up. It’s in the attic I believe now. We should get it down, it’s only about 3 years old. I remember looking at the moon and seeing the craters and ridged edges of the moon, then I saw the shadow where the moon rotated into darkness. I’d like to know how to photograph images with our telescope, perhaps I can check the manufacturers website.

Also, another thing comes to mind, I know that for as much as we know, the moon has no natural core and therefore cannot really substain life. However, if meteorites can make the surface glow, who knows what can happen in the next millions of years?

Ive never really used a telescope except at the last eclipse we had. But ive always wanted to host a live stream of the moon. Maybe oneday I will get a video telescope.

WOW!

That looks really amazing! I need to borrow a telescope from someone ASAP to check that out! I live on a highrise so it should be easy to get some good shots!

Ok.. so what exactly are those? They are cool.. I’ll tell you that. But the only thing I want to know is how in the world people are lucky enough to catch one of those. It seems to me that they don’t happen all that often. I wish I were a scientist and could tell you a bit more about that, but I’m not. =(

i wish i had a telescope that could record, mine can’t do that, but i think it would be cool to see one of these.

And this all happens just to that side of the moon which is sitting to the earth.
What is going on on the “Black side”?
Luck that the earth is protected by its atmosphere.

I don’t have a telescope so i can’t

When I looked at the title, I thought ‘woah, what’s this?’. The idea of this sounds pretty cool, and I think I’ll go and buy a new telescope tomorrow. My old one is completely destroyed after I tried to stare at something in space with it… don’t ask me.

Well, about the people who have asked ‘why doesn’t Earth get hit as often as the moon does?’, well, someone mentioned before that it’s the Earth’s atmosphere. Right, anything would just burn up as it approached.

Bigger asteroids/meteors are something to worry about. You may have heard of a planet called “Planet X” or “Nibiru”, well, Scientists have recently claimed that Planet X is in fact, a huge asteroid (4 times the size of Earth) that has an orbit of 26,000 years.

No, I’m not a dooms dayer, or one of those people who go around posting about the end of the world.

Wow that is a very cool video of an explosion on the moon. Very, very, cool.

How often does the moon get hit though? And it look like there was light or something when I saw the explosion..? Was that just dust??

Very cool indeed. I might just buy a telescope now..?!

Pretty interesting, I would try it if I had a telescope, but there is a problem, you have to wait for one to happen, and if there where only 100 in 2.5 years, that would be like 40 per year, so like 3 or 4 per month, so 1 per week, and what if it happens while the moon is not visible :O Guess you have to be lucky to get to se one.

I don’t own a telescope I guess its time to buy one any one got any good suggestions for a good type and brand I have always been fascinated with space and the moon and would like to see the moon get git in person

i dont have a telescope anymore but if i still did this would be neat to look at . there is so much that happens in space that would be neat to see that most of us dont even know is happening. good article chrisss!

I personally am glad that our atmosphere protects us from these falling meteors, but I do think the moon looks really pretty without one. (referring to nasa photos) This also makes me wonder if these meteors will eventually tilt the moon’s orbit so that something drastic might happen. It’s a really cool bit of news, but a tad worry some from my angle.

Very nice, only if I had the luck or the patients to have this happen!

Besides, my telescope can’t have a camcorder attached to it, it is too slick and so no way to have a camera working on it without sliding off!

Nice find though!

That’s really interesting. I’d have never guessed that the dark circles would be meteors hitting the Moon’s surface. Though now, it’ll be hard to think of a future where people live on the Moon, which has always been the case with sci-fi novelists. Imagine living there then being bombarded with meteors that’ll cause an explosion just like that image!

The moon does seem to get hit alot
But why is nasa sending more people, wont this cause another “its fake” controversy.
But i do remmember theat the moon did get hit more then we know

Glad for our atmosphere, meteoroids seem liek theyd hurt

When is saw this post i thought to myself….how many times is the moon getting hit with asteroids going at like 80,000mph , thats when i remember watching on TV about this show that was talking about the moon and other planets as well. Thats where i found out why the earth hasn’t been getting hit with these light speed traveling asteroids.

Basically we have a an atmosphere around us while the moon doesn’t. so its gets hit every day and we don’t notice. we are lucky that our atmosphere is able to burn up these rocks and turn them into burnt ash and other stuff so thats nice.

At least nasa has been recording how many times the moon has been getting hit.

Thanks Chris for the info and see ya later :D

I think this is awesome, this makes me want to buy a telescope hoping that I will catch a explosion.

Hey Chris:

Thanks for this. I’ll bet it will be an interesting experiment to try with my kids one weekend. Thank you, am always looking for new and unique things to keep the two of them interested.

Wait, that’s a huge CHUNK!! lol..

In the picture, the moon looks like a plain marble with no holes ^^. The holes are inconscpicious.. The moon really looks like a planet…

BTW Chris, I have troubles accessing your site this past days.. It says Database Error… lol

well ive never really looked for explosions on the moon im to fascinated with other things like the fact that the center of our galaxy is a black hole and the crazy theory of time dilation, good to know that the moon has explosions on it I guess?

Really! It would be cool.
But, how could you attach your camera to your telescope? Could the camera lens just be taped to the eyepiece of the telescope? Or is there a special way?
By the way, how could you synchronize your shot to the explosion of the moon? From what I see on the video, the explosion does not last long. If you click too early or too late, you get nothing of the explosion.
And how could I know which part of the moon the explosion would appear? I need to know to make the best shot of it.
Should i use a digital camera, or should I use traditional film camera? would there be a difference if I use one or the other?
I think you need to know a lot of technical details about photographing the heavens to get a descent photo of the explosion. What do you think?

Hi Chris, I’m glad your parents are doing better. I think everyone wishing for them to get well helped!
My husband and I both have telescopes (from pre-marriage days) so we will take a look at the moon for some explosions. I wonder how long we need to look before we see one…

If people want to look at the moon and other planets and stars they can go over to Slooh.com they have a amazing site for star gazers of all ages.

There are all kinds of amateur astronomy projects out there that anyone with a decent telescope and some basic knowledge can take part in. I have a passing interest in the subject and listen to “Astronomy Cast” a weekly podcast they talk about all kinds of interesting stuff.

This is very sweet, I have really got into studying our solar system lately so I finally ordered a telescope. The comments about starting a colony on the moon cracks me up up, but in all seriousness once we figure out how to patch the hole in our Ozone we should be able to figure out how to create an atmosphere on the moon. It sounds like a dream, or perhaps maybe not?

Well that is really interesting. It just go’s to show how much the moon around are planet helps us out. I hope they show more of these types of things, its definatelly worth it to see.

Incredible. I’ve never gotten into the whole astronomy thing, but it might be an interesting activity one night. Good thing this isn’t happening on Earth!

These would be great to be able to show the kids – would beat the heck out of them watching television or surfing the web (since they aren’t exactly hovering over wikipedia or encyclopedia britannica with their online time).

But, I suspect that when they say it could be photographed with a backyard telescope, it may be an accurate but over-generalized statement – in that people living in cities may not be able to get a clear enough view due to ambient light in the atmosphere from the reflection of city lighting (much as trying to stargaze at night in Phoenix, Az as opposed to Smalltown,Mt), but that same telescope would probably do fine out of town to witness it.

I’ve never been into Astronomy, but stuff like this is always interesting to see ^^

I don’t have a telescope. But that view from the telescope sure is interesting!

Ehhhh O.O
I never knew that about meteors!
I’ve looked at the moon before, but I have NEVER ever seen the moon getting hit before.
My family visited NASA headquarters in Florida, and we one night looking at the telescopes. Didn’t see a thing.
But this really is something new and interesting.

“Meteoroids hit the Moon so fast, normally at least 13,000 m/s, that they heat up the surface enough that it glows”

Wow! Very interesting article. I had no idea the moon got hit so often! Luckily, the atmosphere around the Earth keeps us humans safe : ). It makes me wonder how often other planets get hit.

It is pretty amazing that the explosions can be seen with a backyard telescope. Those explosions must be really bight!

The moon has no atmosphere like Earth, so meteroids would not burn upon hitting the moon. Btw, there are some 3rd parties planning to build a amusement park and tourist attractions on the moon. I think its pretty cool otherwise, being able to see from my backyard. These past few days have been cloudy, so hopefully the moon might come out one clear night, and i could possibly if im lucky get a glimpse of this myself

Sadly the last telescope I had was years ago, and haven’t had the time to get back into looking up at the stars. Amazing to see this kind of thing, though I doubt I would be able to see that kind of thing with the quality telescope i Have, plus the amount of light pollution in the area makes seeing anything near impossible.

Unfortunately I do not have a good enough telescope to record this. This is quite amazing, I never knew that meteoroids hit the surface of the moon. I learn new things by visiting your blog everyday, keep up the great work!

Thanks!

I don’t know anyone who has the time to watch the moon through a telescope waiting to take a picture or a video of an explosion, but I never knew that meteors hit the moon that often. It would be a little hard to see them in the average backyard most likely because of light pollution. You would probably have to go out to an open field somewhere.

with how much the moon gets hit they still are thinking about building moon a base. I think the would not be the smart thing to do. If the base was to get hit there goes a lot of good people.

This is pretty amazing. I never realized there were so many collisions in outer space. Thank God for our atmosphere!

I don’t think my telescope is good enough to see such explosions. I do remember, though, a month or two ago when the lunar eclipse happened and you could see Saturn. I was glad to see the little bright yellow dot with a ring around it through my dinky telescope.

This seems like a pretty neat idea, I have always been fascinated with the moon and beyond. I used to have a telescope when I was a kid, but I no longer have one. This does make me want to go out and get myself a nice new telescope though. I would really like one of the ones that you can hook into your computer.

13,000 m/s, thats really a huge speed, what happens if
our astronats get hit by those things when they go there.
God should take care of them.
I wish I had that backyard telescope.

Oops, photograph? Can I hook up my Canon digital camera to take pictures of it?

Sure! It will very interesting. But beware! Nowadays, smokes from engines and forest burning went around the world, and can I see moon clearly? Do I need to climb the Hubble and take pictures from there?

For loads of interesting stuff in the universe try watching online vids of UK’s BBC.co.uk television station

the show is called “Horizon” and has lots of episodes about well kinda everything.

hmmm… i don’t have any telescope… are binoculars enough??? hehehe… i think not, the moon is thousand miles away from earth… well, maybe the moon will be getting bigger because of the particles hitting the moon such as meteors…

Now that is awesome, when i’m gonna get rich in the future i’ll be sure start doing that also, it’s just awesome hobby and so simple to do but i guess we are lucky that our mother earth has Atmosphere and magnetic shield :).

@jorg pihelgas: in the future i’ll be shooting things are the moon for you to view at and i’ll be taking your money >:)

I will be using this in the future looks really cool! Who created this 5 stars! But the only bad thing you need to buy a good telescope this can cost up to about $200!

Think I’ll have to dig out my old telescope from the garage and see if I can see any of theses explosions with that dusty old thing. Would be really neat to see them!

Wow, never thought the moon would be constantly hit by those. I wonder if any of them ever hit the “famed” landing on the moon site and the flag they put up there.

Makes me want to go out and visit the local astronomy club and check it out some more and see if any of them know of this.. Yes indeed.. Thank God for the atmosphere!

sorry chris, but that gif looks photoshopped.

Supprising that the entire surface you see is just crater aftercrater with the hitting inside each other.

Its intresting how many objects hit the moon at such a regularity.

I have a very decent telescope (cost about $200-300) but I can’t zoom in nearly as far as that demo explosion. I know that doing this is totally possible but you would need a specially adapted camera, a lens that fit into your telescope, and a lot of time to sit and wait for an explosion, not to mention super-human timing if you are trying to use a still camera. :)

Omnidragon: I read your reply first and I wanted to mention answer a little bit of the question you had about the moon versus the earth.

The moon does not have an atmosphere like the earth. The earth DOES have meteors that hit the earth more often than not – we just don’t hear about them because they’re small (i.e. size of a rock you can hold in your hand). The biggest one was the size of a bus I believe… but they land in areas that (again) are not really talked about.

Now the atmosphere around the earth helps heat up and break down that which is coming towards earth… so by the time it actually hits land (or water), it’s typically very small. It’s kinda like the idea of how water breaks down rock after a while… only much faster.

Where all the hype is on the earth getting hit is this idea that if there is a BIG enough asteroid that heads towards earth… it can very well cause HUGE devestation. It’s a chain reaction that scientists play out all the time, but people don’t like to think about. And again, if we heard that something was going to hit the earth (even if it was a small rock) would you not flip out a little? So it’s really not even mentioned much.

Now the moon on the other hand doesn’t have the atmosphere or anything specific to really cause this kind of visual from being acquired to be difficult (i.e. like water for example or clouds), so it kinda makes sense that it’d be easier to see these small kinds of explosions taking place.

The next thing to think about are the sun storms and the impact they have on our new technologies! Now THAT’S serious business. I’ve heard that a sun storm once wiped out part of the communications systems in Canada (as well as other places). Check it out… it’s stuff I feel we should know about sooner than later so we could plan ahead.

Just my two cents though. :)

Kind Regards,
-Shaina

I’ve never tried to photograph these explosions using a “backyard telescope” and I didn’t know this could pe possible.Anyway this sounds interesting!About that explosions,the moon saves us from “Booms” Thank God he put the moon near us.

It would be cool to try and capture the image, but how long would it take to get a good picture? Anything that will hit it is going to hit the edges since the earth doesnt send up any meteorites that i know of. So most of the explosions would be on the back, causing you to not see a thing. I think ill leave it up to the pros on this one :)

@Kevinaz Looks legit to me. You can see the original video on the NASA site via the link at the beginning of the post. I don’t think NASA is in the business of creating photoshopped videos of meteorites hitting the moon. ;-)

I’ve always wanted my own telescope never could afford a really nice fancy one though. At my school in my Industrial Arts class one of my modules called nanotech we use telescope lenses and mirrors to help us make really cool things but it is very hard to do!

You probably need a pretty high powered telescope to be able to record a high quality video the explosions on the moon. It’s interesting that you can actually see the explosion of a meteor hitting a planet that far away.

Thats pretty cool. It was a smart idea to start studying the impacts because i wouldnt want to be up there on the moon and get knocked in the head with a giant rock lol. But thats alot of hits that the moon takes.

Wow, that sounds really cool, i have to buy myself a telescope next week cause i want to see that with my own two eyes.
i knew for a long time that the craters on the moon are from meteoroids crashing into the moon but i didn’t know that it flashes when it crashes into moon, i love learning new things.

It’s actually pretty amazing what you can do with a simple telescope and a good eye. I think this .gif looks a little bit fake, but I can believe that it makes the moon glow when the meteoroids hit the moon like that. I know that I wouldn’t want to get hit with something treaveling that fast. I’ve never seen the moon get hit with a meteoroid like that, but I hope one day that I will be able to.

Thank god we have a moon, or we would look like Mars. A lot of people don’t realize, but the moon is a very good barrier of protection. Some of the asteroids that hit the moon potentially could have killed us all.

I would have to say that the moon is one of our saving graces. Without a moon, Earth would look a lot like Mars. Some of the asteroids that hit the moon could have potentially killed us a long time ago.

Wow, that explosion animation is amazing! Dangit Chris! Now I want to buy a telescope, too! I have my eyes on a Nikon D300 digital Single Lens Reflex camera and now I think I’ll have to start looking for a telescope!

Guys, any telescopes you might recommend?

This is what I think:
If the moon is that small and it’s getting that much asteroids smashing onto it, Earth, with it’s infinitely larger size, must have multiple times the impact appearing on the moon. However, we don’t see very many craters around our house or meteors racing against the planes. Therefore, I conclude that we should thank God for the fantastic atmosphere that protects us from 13,000 m/s impacts.

i personally love the cosmos and to have some program like that will really be cool to look at i will probably spend 2 hours just looking at that

That is pretty cool. Maybe we will see google moon soon…? :P To bad it wouldnt look the same of all the explosions xD

I think it’s very cool you can photograph asteroids exploding on the moon. The video was totally awesome. Thanks for the tip!

This is quite awesome. I used to track all celestial events when I was younger and take out little telescope out and watch them. Many times i looked at the moon! :)

Lets hope the moon doesnt get hit by the gaint ones scientists predict to hit earth. If the moon got hit by one of the gaint ones and cracked it or worse…it would be bad news for us…..

there was a telescope at the pawnshop witch was $99 i should of picked it up but that was befor microsft came with withere there space app witch probly would of worked on this thing cuz it was able to hook up to the pc

I witnessed an asteriod hit the moon sept 29 1996(12 years ago) and saw where it hit,west of Mons Moro in Mare Cognitum.It was small, bright and fast (total time of sighting within 5 seconds). jpl123@inbox.com please write me for more info. It was seen naked eye and 30x small telescope magnification.It was probably from a comet that had passed within a week,and so I suspect was ice laden and cometary material.It would be an interesting scientific find,I believe. There could be buried ice from the impact,perfectly preserving valuable cometary material.If I saw it naked eye it has to be a nice large amount of water if it was ice,as I believe,since it was so bright.There are many more reasons to support this claim too detailed for this space. I also have info and pics to show exact location of impact. I have pics of People,animals,fossils on Mars for others interested in Mars. Yes,there is life on Mars.They look like us.

wau ~ interesting, i think maybe we can try get a 35-40X optical zoom camcorder and check it out. I dont have the super telescope to see the start or moon.

A lot of things hit the moon. I enjoy watching them, but what I am interested is where those things come from. I learned that those things come around from a long time, and finally hit something 50-100 years later! Thats what I think is exciting. Maybe one day, telescopic technology will get us closer to fully understanding the moon and the other things outside of it. Hopefully I will live on that giant rock one day!

I’m glad it’s the moon getting hit and not Earth. Those speeds would definitely cause some major problems like rolling blackouts, killing of our food supply, maybe even a massive oil pipeline fire!