this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2026
37 points (93.0% liked)

Astronomy

7076 readers
12 users here now

A community for sharing astronomy-related news, content, research, photographs, etc.

When sharing photographs and articles, please make an effort to include source URLs.

founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
 

The impact flash might — might — be visible to telescopes on Earth

top 7 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.works 1 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

rocket booster

It's actually the upper stage which will hit the moon, not the booster. The booster landed back on earth.

[–] breadsmasher@lemmy.world 27 points 1 day ago (1 children)

great. musk has started trashing the moon as well as the earth.

[–] DiaDeLosMuertos@aussie.zone 13 points 1 day ago

Is there some kind of fine for littering/dumping ?

[–] magnetosphere@fedia.io 13 points 1 day ago

Musk, nobody wants your trash on the Moon.

[–] rslogix89@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] CombatWombat@feddit.online 7 points 1 day ago

I don't have the setup but if you do, they have a way to share your data with scientists

As I wrote in BAN Issue #1042, the upper stage of a Falcon 9 rocket is going to hit the moon next week, on August 5, 2026. The impact time is predicted to be 06:34:33 UTC (02:34:33 Eastern US time). The upper stage will impact near the crater Einstein in the northwest portion of the moon, which, unfortunately, will be lit by the sun at the time. That will make seeing any impact flash difficult.

But not impossible! A paper has come out detailing the event, and the plans to observe it. It’s not likely to be visible by amateur telescopes, but hey, “amateurs” have pretty sophisticated equipment these days, so I would encourage anyone with a good setup and some experience give it a try. You’ll need to take video — the flash will be very brief, so capturing it during a short image exposure of the sunlit moon is extremely unlikely. The paper also talks about how to share data if you get any.