Most of these explosions were captured during meteor showers. I'd guess
the uneven distribution simply reflects where the imagers were looking
at those times, and possibly the FOV of the imaging systems. Given an
average phase of 50%, you'd expect most of the recorded hits to be
towards the limbs. There is a bias towards the first quarter over the
third quarter, which is probably explained by the fact that more imaging
time was spent before midnight than after.
Chris
*****************************************
Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com
----- Original Message -----
From: "Piper R.W. Hollier" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Wednesday, May 21, 2008 11:46 PM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Observed lunar meteorite impacts
(distribution)
Dear Mark and list,
For me the distribution of impact sites shown on the second image "A
map of the 100 explosions observed since late 2005" runs counter to my
intuition. Why is the distribution not more uniform? There are large
areas, especially near the poles, with no impacts recorded, while
other areas have rather dense clustering of impact observations.
Comets often have highly inclined orbits, so it seems that we should
expect some impacts near the poles.
Any ideas out there?
Piper
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