Since the Moon has no atmosphere, meteoroids hitting the lunar surface are completely destroyed as a consequence of these collisions, and a new crater is produced during this process. Besides, these impacts give rise to brief flashes of light that can be detected from Earth (Fig. 1). Since 1999, these lunar impact flashes have been identified in the framework of several monitoring surveys by employing telescopes endowed with high-sensitivity CCD cameras (Ortiz et al. 2000; Yanagisawa and Kisaichi 2002; Yanagisawa et al. 2006; Ortiz et al. 2002, 2006; Madiedo et al. 2014, 2015a, b; Suggs et al. 2014).
Example of impact flash produced by the collision of a meteoroid on the lunar surface. The event was recorded in the framework of the MIDAS Survey on December 7th 2013 at 19h31m06s UT
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Madiedo, J.M., Ortiz, J.L. (2019). Lunar Impact Flashes, Temperature. In: Cudnik, B. (eds) Encyclopedia of Lunar Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05546-6_222-1
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