Sign up to our free weekly IndyTech newsletter delivered straight to your inbox Sign up to our free IndyTech newsletter
Something appears to have smashed into the moon right as the world watched the lunar eclipse .
Reports from around the world show a small flash on the moon's surface. Numerous videos and photos – taken as the world watched the event referred to as the "Super Blood Wolf Moon" – appear to confirm that a rock or some other object had crashed into it.
The first person to have publicly mentioned seeing the flash was a Reddit user who said they "saw a bright flash on the moon" as they were looking up during the lunar eclipse, and had run inside and checked on a feed from Morocco that included the same flash. They had also checked and seen the light on the feed made available by the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, they said.
“Could this have been a meteor impact on the moon?” the Reddit user asked in their post. “The fact that it was visible from Morocco and California as well as my location in the Northeast United States would seem to rule out something like a straight-on meteor in the Earth's atmosphere (although I did see a shooting star right near the moon a bit before I saw the flash).”
The flash was so quick that it was hard to be sure that it showed something really hitting the moon, rather than a mistake, something more terrestrial like a plane, or a problem with the camera. So scientists got to work checking other footage from the moon – of which there was plenty, given people were taking videos of the eclipse – to check whether it could be seen on other footage.
Super blood wolf moon totally eclipses the sun: in picturesShow all 28 1 /28Super blood wolf moon totally eclipses the sun: in pictures Super blood wolf moon totally eclipses the sun: in pictures US
Getty
Super blood wolf moon totally eclipses the sun: in pictures US A composite image of the eclipse over LA
AP
Super blood wolf moon totally eclipses the sun: in pictures Hungary The moon fully shadowed by the Earth is seen above the castle of Salgo during a total lunar eclipse near Salgotarjan
EPA
Super blood wolf moon totally eclipses the sun: in pictures UK A blood moon, set to be the last of its kind for two years, rising over Huddersfield
PA
Super blood wolf moon totally eclipses the sun: in pictures Turkey Full moon rises over Duzce province of Turkey
Anadolu Agency/Getty
Super blood wolf moon totally eclipses the sun: in pictures Belgium The moon is seen beside a quadriga on the top of the Cinquantenaire arch
Reuters
Super blood wolf moon totally eclipses the sun: in pictures Belarus The "super blood wolf moon" is seen behind an Orthodox church
Reuters
Super blood wolf moon totally eclipses the sun: in pictures Germany
Reuters
Super blood wolf moon totally eclipses the sun: in pictures France Lunar eclipse behind the Tours's cathedral
AFP/Getty
Super blood wolf moon totally eclipses the sun: in pictures UK The "super blood wolf moon" is seen in partial eclipse in the skies behind the London Eye
Reuters
Super blood wolf moon totally eclipses the sun: in pictures Sweden A total lunar eclipse is pictured with the buildning Turning Torso in front, in Malmo
EPA
Super blood wolf moon totally eclipses the sun: in pictures Argentina Crowds gather at the planetarium as they wait for the lunar eclipse in Buenos Aires
EPA
Super blood wolf moon totally eclipses the sun: in pictures Germany A view of the lunar eclipse over the cross on top of the Elizabeth Church in Nuremberg
EPA
Super blood wolf moon totally eclipses the sun: in pictures US A total lunar eclipse and supermoon is seen over ancient Native American petroglyphs
Getty
Super blood wolf moon totally eclipses the sun: in pictures France The "super blood wolf moon" is seen during a total lunar eclipse under a monument in Marseille
Reuters
Super blood wolf moon totally eclipses the sun: in pictures Portugal People watch the sunset from the top of a hill as the full moon rises behind them in Lisbon
AP
Super blood wolf moon totally eclipses the sun: in pictures UAE The moon over the stadium ahead of the AFC Asian Cup match between Iran and Oman at Mohammed Bin Zayed Stadium in Abu Dhabi
Getty
Super blood wolf moon totally eclipses the sun: in pictures UK The first full moon of 2019 rises off the shore of Tenby, Pembrokeshire, Wales
Reuters
Super blood wolf moon totally eclipses the sun: in pictures The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia The so-called Super Blood Wolf Moon rises over the cross of the orthodox church Holy Mary Perybleptos in the city of Ohrid
EPA
Super blood wolf moon totally eclipses the sun: in pictures UK A blood moon, set to be the last of its kind for two years, rises above the 'Maritime Prowess' by Albert Hemstock Hodge on on the western end pavilion of Hull Guildhall ahead of the Lunar Eclipse
PA
Super blood wolf moon totally eclipses the sun: in pictures
PA
Super blood wolf moon totally eclipses the sun: in pictures Belgium A view of the lunar eclipse pictured in Jubilee Park
EPA
Super blood wolf moon totally eclipses the sun: in pictures UK The moon waxing gibbous silhouettes a weather vane in north London
EPA
Super blood wolf moon totally eclipses the sun: in pictures UK The blood moon appears to the side of Craven Cottage as Fulham play Tottenham in their Premier League match. A total lunar eclipse is set to take place in the early hours of Monday morning, garnishing a reddish colour to the lunar surface
AFP/Getty
Super blood wolf moon totally eclipses the sun: in pictures Belgium A composite image of the eclipse over Brussels
Reuters
Super blood wolf moon totally eclipses the sun: in pictures Chile The moon is seen during a total lunar eclipse
Reuters
Super blood wolf moon totally eclipses the sun: in pictures France Super Blood Wolf Moon behind the Tours's cathedral
AFP/Getty
Super blood wolf moon totally eclipses the sun: in pictures UAE A full moon is seen over the Hazza Bin Zayed Stadium in Al-Ain following the AFC Asian Cup match between Thailand and China
AFP/Getty
A number of different videos showed the same flash, at the same time and in the same place on the moon's surface. It was also cross-referenced with data from the Moon Impacts Detection and Analysis System, or MIDAS for short, which is a scientific project that watches for the faint flashes that indicate some thing has hit the moon.
All of that allowed scientists to confirm that the moon did appear to have hit something, right in the middle of the lunar eclipse.
It is thought to be the first time such an impact has been filmed during an eclipse, though they tend to happen fairly regularly. The darkness of the eclipse probably made it possible to actually see it: usually, when the moon is full, it is too bright to see the much fainter bursts that mark a meteor impact.
Nasa's most stunning pictures of spaceShow all 30 1 /30Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Solar Flare An image from Nasa's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) shows a 200,000 mile long solar filament ripping through the Sun's corona in September 2013
Nasa
Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Nasa Celebrates 50 Years of Spacewalking For 50 years, NASA has been "suiting up" for spacewalking. In this 1984 photograph of the first untethered spacewalk, NASA astronaut Bruce McCandless is in the midst of the first "field" tryout of a nitrogen-propelled backpack device called the Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU)
Nasa
Nasa's most stunning pictures of space A Hubble Cosmic Couple The spectacular cosmic pairing of the star Hen 2-427 — more commonly known as WR 124 — and the nebula M1-67 which surrounds it
ESA/Hubble & NASA
Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Veil Nebula Supernova Remnant Nasa's Hubble Space Telescope has unveiled in stunning detail a small section of the Veil Nebula - expanding remains of a massive star that exploded about 8,000 years ago
Nasa's most stunning pictures of space The Soyuz TMA-15M rocket launch The Soyuz TMA-15M rocket launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Monday, Nov. 24, 2014, carrying three new astronauts to the International Space Station. It also took caviar, ready for the satellite's inhabitants to celebrate the holidays
Nasa
Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Earth from the ISS From the International Space Station, Expedition 42 Flight Engineer Terry W. Virts took this photograph of the Gulf of Mexico and U.S. Gulf Coast at sunset
Nasa
Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Black Hole Friday Nasa celebrated Black Friday by looking into space instead — sharing pictures of black holes
Nasa
Nasa's most stunning pictures of space NuSTAR X-rays stream off the sun in this image showing observations from by NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, overlaid on a picture taken by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO)
Nasa
Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Cassiopeia A c A false colour image of Cassiopeia A comprised with data from the Spitzer and Hubble Space Telescopes and the Chandra X-Ray observatory
Nasa
Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Orion Capsule splashes down The Orion capsule jetted off into space before heading back a few hours later — having proved that it can be used, one day, to carry humans to Mars
Nasa
Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Earth Observations From Gemini IV in 1965 This photograph of the Florida Straits and Grand Bahama Bank was taken during the Gemini IV mission during orbit no. 19 in 1965. The Gemini IV crew conducted scientific experiments, including photography of Earth's weather and terrain, for the remainder of their four-day mission following Ed White's historic spacewalk on June 3
Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Frosty slopes of Mars This image of an area on the surface of Mars, approximately 1.5 by 3 kilometers in size, shows frosted gullies on a south-facing slope within a crater. The image was taken by Nasa's HiRISE camera, which is mounted on its Mars Reconaissance Orbiter
Nasa
Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Yellowstone from space NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman shared this image of Yellowstone via his twitter account
Nasa
Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Saturn This near-infrared color image shows a specular reflection, or sunglint, off of a hydrocarbon lake named Kivu Lacus on Saturn's moon Titan
Nasa
Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Worlds Apart Although Mimas and Pandora, shown here, both orbit Saturn, they are very different moons. Pandora, "small" by moon standards (50 miles or 81 kilometers across) is elongated and irregular in shape. Mimas (246 miles or 396 kilometers across), a "medium-sized" moon, formed into a sphere due to self-gravity imposed by its higher mass
Nasa
Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Solar Flare An X1.6 class solar flare flashes in the middle of the sun in this image taken 10 September, captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory
Nasa
Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy An image of the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy seen in infrared light by the Herschel Space Observatory. Regions of space such as this are where new stars are born from a mixture of elements and cosmic dust
Nasa
Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Mars Rover Spirit Nasa's Mars Rover Spirit took the first picture from Spirit since problems with communications began a week earlier. The image shows the robotic arm extended to the rock called Adirondack
Nasa
Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Morning Aurora From the Space Station Nasa astronaut Scott Kelly captured this photograph of the green lights of the aurora from the International Space Station
Nasa/Scott Kelly
Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Launch of History - Making STS-41G Mission in 1984 The Space Shuttle Challenger launches from Florida at dawn. On this mission, Kathryn Sullivan became the first U.S. woman to perform a spacewalk and Marc Garneau became the first Canadian in space. The crew of seven was the largest to fly on a spacecraft at that time, and STS-41G was the first flight to include two female astronauts
Nasa's most stunning pictures of space A Fresh Perspective on an Extraordinary Cluster of Galaxies Galaxy clusters are often described by superlatives. After all, they are huge conglomerations of galaxies, hot gas, and dark matter and represent the largest structures in the Universe held together by gravity
Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Hubble Sees a Galactic Sunflower The arrangement of the spiral arms in the galaxy Messier 63, seen here in an image from the Nasa Hubble Space Telescope, recall the pattern at the center of a sunflower
ESA/Hubble & NASA
Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Pluto image Four images from New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) were combined with colour data from the Ralph instrument to create this enhanced colour global view of Pluto
Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Fresh Crater Near Sirenum Fossae Region of Mars The HiRISE camera aboard Nasa's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter acquired this closeup image of a "fresh" (on a geological scale, though quite old on a human scale) impact crater in the Sirenum Fossae region of Mars. This impact crater appears relatively recent as it has a sharp rim and well-preserved ejecta
Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Hubble Peers into the Most Crowded Place in the Milky Way This Nasa Hubble Space Telescope image presents the Arches Cluster, the densest known star cluster in the Milky Way
NASA & ESA
Nasa's most stunning pictures of space An Astronaut's View from Space Nasa astronaut Reid Wiseman tweeted this photo from the International Space Station on 2 September 2014
Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Giant Landform on Mars On Mars, we can observe four classes of sandy landforms formed by the wind, or aeolian bedforms: ripples, transverse aeolian ridges, dunes, and what are called “draa”
Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Expedition 39 Landing A sokol suit helmet can be seen against the window of the Soyuz TMA-11M capsule shortly after the spacecraft landed with Expedition 39 Commander Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), Soyuz Commander Mikhail Tyurin of Roscosmos, and Flight Engineer Rick Mastracchio of NASA near the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan
(NASA/Bill Ingalls)
Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Jupiter's Great Red Spot Viewed by Voyager I Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system and perhaps the most majestic. Vibrant bands of clouds carried by winds that can exceed 400 mph continuously circle the planet's atmosphere
Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Chandra Observatory Sees a Heart in the Darkness This Chandra X-Ray Observatory image of the young star cluster NGC 346 highlights a heart-shaped cloud of 8 million-degree Celsius gas in the central region
Scientists now hope to collect up the reports, images and videos of the moment of impact in the hope of studying the event in even more detail and locating more precisely where the meteor might have struck.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies