In March 2012 we detected the 11th lunar impact candidate. What we made so far is, at least for us, incredible and in some aspects surpasses our optimistic estimates. We are happy of our results. Most of the detections were already published in several issues of SELENOLOGY TODAY.
We begun our survey in 2009 and spent the first two years of searching without detections. We captured the first impact candidate when we modified our procedure of scanning and the aperture of one instrument. At the beginning of 2011 we changed from a 20cm to a 28cm Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope.
Our observatories are located 13km apart. Not very far, but enough to discriminate for possible glints of very high satellites.
When the phase of the Moon is good, we observe every possible evening/morning. We observed so far for 79 hours at the evening (past new moon) and for 89 hour at the morning (pre new moon). The rate of detected impact candidates at waxing is 1 every 11h; at waning 1 every 22h. If one don’t take into account the first 2 years the rate is higher: 1 every 4h at waning and 1 every 8h at waxing.
In several time windows we observed with only one instrument. In those periods we detected some candidates with the characteristics of true impacts but they were not confirmed by a second instrument. We saved those data for future analysis.
We have not reached our results without the valuable help of various people. Raffaello Lena in primis, but also George Varros and Peter Gural. We thank them very warmly.
Here the list of the impact candidates
2012 March 28, 21:02:48UT
2012 March 28, 18:29:56UT
2012 February 26, 18:10:54UT
2011 December 19, 02:27:45UT (Report in Selenology Today 28)
2011 November 21, 05:25:22UT (Report in Selenology Today 28)
2011 October 21, 04:32:34UT (Report in Selenology Today 25)
2011 October 21, 03:36:57UT (Report in Selenology Today 25)
2011 April 10, 19:47:02UT (Report in Selenology Today 24)
2011 April 10, 19:28:00UT (Report in Selenology Today 24)
2011 April 09, 20:52:44UT (Report in Selenology Today 24)
2011 February 11, 20:37:00UT (Report in Selenology Today 23)
Here more informations.
