[meteorite-list] Observed Lunar Impact 50th Anniv Stuart's Crater

From: E.J <jonee_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:27:45 2004
Message-ID: <3FAB5ED4.2070405_at_epix.net>

Notible Asteroid Impact observed by a modern human

Taken From
:<http://astrogeology.usgs.gov/HotTopics/20030307_stuartscrater.html>
Also 3 Meg Tiff file of
Crater:<http://astrogeology.usgs.gov/HotTopics/stuartcrater/LOIV109h1_portion_labels_inset.tif>


  Lunar Mystery Solved


On the morning of November 15, 1953, amateur astronomer Dr. Leon Stuart
photographed what he believed to be a massive, white-hot fireball of
vaporized rock rising from the center of the Moon's face. If his theory
was correct, he would be the first and only human in history to witness
and document the impact of an asteroid-sized body impacting the Moon.
Almost a half-century passed, and what had become known in astronomy
circles as "Stuart's Event" was still an unproven, controversial theory.

Bonnie J. Buratti, a scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
Pasadena, Calif., and Lane Johnson of Pomona College, Claremont, Calif.,
took a fresh look at the 50-year-old lunar mystery. Buratti and Johnson
first looked at imagery from the Lunar Orbiter mission, but were unable
to definitively identify a candidate crater that would be the evidence
of the event. They then turned to Clementine mission imagery, which
offers more color information than Lunar Orbiter imagery. With
Clementine mission data, they have identified a crater that is most
likely the result of "Stuart's Event", validating his claim to have seen
the impact. Buratti and Johnson's study appears in the January 2003
issue of the space journal, Icarus
<http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=IssueURL%38;_tockey=%23TOC%236821%232003%23998389998%23385584%23FLA%23Volume_161,_Issue_1,_Pages_1-198_%28January_2003%29%38;_auth=y%38;view=c%38;_acct=C000050221%38;_version=1%38;_urlVersion=0%38;_userid=10%38;md5=11fe84638513d51d0d78a4dd607ae08b>.


Here at the USGS Astrogeology Research Program, team members on the
Lunar Orbiter Digitization Project (LODP)
<http://astrogeology.usgs.gov/Projects/LunarOrbiterDigitization/>, led
by Lisa Gaddis <http://astrogeology.usgs.gov/About/People/LisaGaddis/>,
have looked at their reconstructed imagery of the region and found
evidence of a crater supporting Buratti and Johnson's claim. For the
LODP project, team members are scanning film strips from the Lunar
Orbiter Mission, digitally mosaicking the strips into frames, and
enhancing the results to remove errors and artifacts such as striping.
Because the crater lies on the edge of a film strip, the crater is
partially obscured in existing mosaics published in the /Lunar Orbiter
Photographic Atlas of the Moon/ by Bowker and Hughes (NASA SP-206,
1971). With the improved mosaics being created by LODP, the crater
identified by Buratti and Johnson can be seen clearly in the
reconstructed Lunar Orbiter image data (see the images to the left).

Suggestions have been submitted to the the International Astronomical
Union (IAU) <http://www.iau.org/> to have the feature named Stuart
Crater and be included in the Gazeteer of Planetary Nomenclature
<http://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov> in honor of Dr. Leon Stuart, who
passed away in 1969.
Received on Fri 07 Nov 2003 03:59:00 AM PST