NELIOTA: ESA's new NEO lunar impact monitoring project with the 1.2m telescope at the National Observatory of Athens

Bonanos, A. Z.; Liakos, A.; Xilouris, E. M.; Boumis, P.; Bellas‐Velidis, I.; Marousis, Athanassios; Dapergolas, A.; Fytsilis, Anastasios; Noutsopoulos, Andreas; Charmandaris, V.; Tsiganis, K.; Tsinganos, K.; Els, S.; Koschny, D.; Lock, T.; Navarro, Vicente

doi:10.1117/12.2232453

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 5 publications

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“…7(E4b) indicates that gravitational focusing of a stream by the Earth could enhance the rate of meteoroids striking the Moon by a factor of a few. The meteoroid flux at the Moon can be measured via impact flashes (Suggs et al 2014;Madiedo et al 2014;Bonanos et al 2016); determining whether and when such enhancements are visible could be worthy of further study.…”

Section: Gravitational Enhancement Of Showers By the Earth Or Moonmentioning

confidence: 99%

Realistic gravitational focusing of meteoroid streams

Moorhead

Clements

Vida

2020

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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The number density and flux of a meteoroid stream is enhanced near a massive body due to the phenomenon known as gravitational focusing. The greatest enhancement occurs directly opposite the massive body from the stream radiant: as an observer approaches this location, the degree of focusing is unbound for a perfectly collimated stream. However, real meteoroid streams exhibit some dispersion in radiant and speed that will act to eliminate this singularity. In this paper, we derive an analytic approximation for this smoothing that can be used in meteoroid environment models and is based on real measurements of meteor shower radiant dispersion.

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Section: Gravitational Enhancement Of Showers By the Earth Or Moonmentioning

confidence: 99%

Realistic gravitational focusing of meteoroid streams

Moorhead

Clements

Vida

2020

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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NELIOTA: Methods, statistics, and results for meteoroids impacting the Moon

Liakos

Bonanos

Xilouris

et al. 2020

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Context. This paper contains the results from the first 30 months of the NELIOTA project for impacts of Near-Earth Objects/meteoroids on the lunar surface. Our analysis on the statistics concerning the efficiency of the campaign and the parameters of the projectiles and the impacts is presented. Aims. The parameters of the lunar impact flashes based on simultaneous observations in two wavelength bands are used to estimate the distributions of the masses, sizes and frequency of the impactors. These statistics can be used both in space engineering and science. Methods. The photometric fluxes of the flashes are measured using aperture photometry and their apparent magnitudes are calculated using standard stars. Assuming that the flashes follow a black body law of irradiation, the temperatures can be derived analytically, while the parameters of the projectiles are estimated using fair assumptions on their velocity and luminous efficiency of the impacts. Results. 79 lunar impact flashes have been observed with the 1.2 m Kryoneri telescope in Greece. The masses of the meteoroids range between 0.7 g and 8 kg and their respective sizes between 1-20 cm depending on their assumed density, impact velocity, and luminous efficiency. We find a strong correlation between the observed magnitudes of the flashes and the masses of the meteoroids. Moreover, an empirical relation between the emitted energies of each band has been derived allowing the estimation of the physical parameters of the meteoroids that produce low energy impact flashes. Conclusions. The NELIOTA project has so far the highest detection rate and the faintest limiting magnitude for lunar impacts compared to other ongoing programs. Based on the impact frequency distribution on Moon, we estimate that sporadic meteoroids with typical masses less than 100 g and sizes less than 5 cm enter the mesosphere of the Earth with a rate ∼ 108 meteoroids hr −1 and also impact Moon with a rate of ∼ 8 meteoroids hr −1 .

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NELIOTA: ESA's new NEO lunar impact monitoring project with the 1.2m telescope at the National Observatory of Athens

Cited by 2 publications

References 5 publications

Realistic gravitational focusing of meteoroid streams

Realistic gravitational focusing of meteoroid streams

NELIOTA: Methods, statistics, and results for meteoroids impacting the Moon

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