Bright Flash On the Moon

      In March a bright flash was visible on the moon.  The flash didn't last long, but according to NASA it was as bright as a 4th magnitude star.  It was caused by a meteor impact.  During the same period as the impact, there were also several meteors visible in the Earth's skies.  The Earth-Moon system had passed through a debris field of some kind.  

 
       These chunks of space rock weren't very large, not scary large anyway.  They were about the size of  large rocks and the one that struck the moon was the size of a boulder.  It was about 90 pounds (40 kg), and about a foot wide.  If that one would have hit the Earth's atmosphere, it would have been seen as a very long and bright streak.  
      Having no atmosphere to burn these up, the moon gets pelted by even the smallest meteors.  The atmosphere of the Earth protects us from most meteors.  Except for the very large ones, they all just burn away as a bright flash in the sky.  
      This meteor was seen by a video analyst of the Marshall Space Flight Center's monitoring system, a part of NASA's Lunar Monitoring Program.  Started in 2005, NASA put the Lunar Monitoring Program into place to watch the Moon for impacts.  Since the program began they have recorded over 300 strikes to the Moon's surface.  According to the NASA spokesman of the project, March's impact was so far the largest. 

                                           Artist's rendition of a lunar impact

                      All the recorded lunar impacts since the monitoring program began


      You can watch this impact, and get more of the details right from NASA in the video below.