This weekend (April 22-24, 2007), the Earth will cross an earlier path of Comet Thatcher which gives rise to the Lyrid meteor shower. But the Earth is not alone in seeing this meteor shower. There's going to be a meteor shower on the Moon, too, but unlike Earth the Moon has no atmosphere to intercept the Lyrids. Instead, meteoroids will hit the lunar surface and explode. This diagram shows how Lyrids will rain down over the north pole of the crescent Moon:
 Credit: Bill Cooke, NASA Meteoroid Environment Office, MSFC
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Using a Meade 14-inch telescope, astronomers at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center have shown that lunar meteors are sometimes observable from Earth. They appear as brief flashes of light ranging in brightness from 3rd to 8th magnitude. If you're up for a challenge, train your telescope on the dark side of the crescent Moon this weekend; you might catch an exploding Lyrid.
| Lunar Impact Resources
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Lunar Impact Monitoring
NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office and Marshall Space Flight Center's Space Environments Team use Earth-based observations of the dark portion of the moon to establish the rates and sizes of large meteoroids striking the lunar surface.
Lunar Geminids
News story about the detection of Geminid meteors hitting the Moon in Dec. 2006.
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