The impact of the Japanese Kaguya lunar spacecraft onto the Moon’s surface has been successfully captured by at least one observatory. The Space Coalition Blog reports that observers using the Anglo Australian Telescope snagged the flash of impact, and the image itself can be seen here. I can’t embed the image here since it’s copyrighted (dagnappit) but click the link to see the image sequence, where the flash is clearly visible.
The impact happened at 18:25 GMT on June 10, pretty much right as scheduled.
Here’s a translation of the Kaguya impact news, which oddly translates the name of the probe into “furniture store”. The Lunar Picture of the Day has more info as well.
Hopefully more pictures will come in over the next day or so. Stay tuned!
Tip o’ the Whipple Shield to Emily Lakdawalla.
