Lunar Impact Project- Campaign 2001
Leonids and Orionids 2001

by Raffaello Lena

ALS Lunar impact project Coordinator
 (e-mail gibbidomine@libero.it)

Introduction
 

Two recent papers [1][2] revealed that a flash recorded during a video camera monitoring of the waxing Moon's dark side is not recognizable as the trace of a real lunar impact on the basis of purely photometric and statistical considerations. The only real way to confirm an impact event observation is for two or more observers to simultaneously watch and record the event.
In paper [2] R. Lena suggested to defocus the image recorded by the video camera, or to place a dispersing element in front of the CCD, as methods for a single observer to validate the impact origin of the recorded flash.

In a next paper  [3] we described these techniques, particularly the second one, much more sophisticated and costly, which could give interesting information about the nature of the  lunar impact.

During recent Orionids and Leonids,  lunar observers didn't use our suggestions described in [2] [3]. So a flash must be recorded by more than one observer, separated by not less than 20 km,  to validate the impact origin.

 

Orionids 2001

Several flashes were reported during Orionids. However none of these flashes have been independently confirmed, so it is very possible that the events were cosmic ray signatures [1][2].
In Italy a suspect flash detected on 21 october 2001 at 17:47:49 UT near Catharina [4] was not confirmed from a simultaneous record carried out by Badalotti (frames from 17:46:00 until 17:48:10 UT).

The lack of simultaneous confirmation suggest a cosmic ray event (frame by Badalotti in fig 1, without any flash)  [5]  .

 

As previously stated we  need more individuals to observe the Moon on a routine basis.
No interesting events were detected during our GLR-ALS Campaign carried out  on 17-19  november 2001.

On 20 November 2001  at 17:31:34 UT,  Giampiero Mascelli (PMP), from Italy,  recorded a sequence of point flashes.