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INTRODUCTION

 


 

The Moon is continuously being impacted by objects of different sizes moving at thousands of kilometers per hour. These objects are mainly fragments coming from asteroids and comets and are called meteoroids. The Earth also suffers the impact of these meteoroids, which in most cases are completely destroyed in the atmosphere before reaching the ground. But since the Moon has no atmosphere, meteoroids impact the lunar surface at high speed. So these particles are completely destroyed during these collisions giving rise to brief flashes that can be recorded from Earth by means of telescopes. The first systematic attempts that were made to identify impact flashes due to the collision of large meteoroids on the lunar surface by using telescopes equipped with CCD cameras date back to 1997 (Ortiz et al. 1999).

By detecting the impact flashes of meteoroids on the Moon we can obtain, for instance, very valuable information about the flux of interplanetary matter that impacts our planet. This technique has one important advantage, as we can monitor a much bigger area (the Moon's surface) than the region covered when we analyse the interaction of meteoroids with the Earth's atmosphere by means of meteor-observing stations.

As a continuation of the pioneer lunar impacts survey carried out from Spain in 1997 by Dr. Ortiz (see, for instance, Ortiz et al. 1999 and Ortiz et al. 2000), our team is performing a renewed monitoring of the night side of the Moon by means of telescopes and high-sensitivity CCD video cameras (see, for instance, Madiedo et al. 2010, Madiedo et al. 2014, Madiedo et al. 2015a, Madiedo et al. 2015b). This project is called MIDAS (Moon Impacts Detection and Analysis System). The MIDAS Project is currently being developed from three astronomical observatories located in Spain: Sevilla, La Hita and La Sagra.

 

 
   
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