SMART-1 impact – the big picture

This wide-angle animation is built with images taken by the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) on the Mauna Kea volcano at Hawaii on 3 September 2006, and shows the flash generated by the SMART-1 impact on the Moon.

The observations were made with the WIRCam wide-field infrared camera, featuring a 10-second exposure time. As the impact was on the South-East of the Moon, the South-East area of the Moon was placed on the North-West corner of the North-West detector. Only a tiny fraction of the whole field really used to look at the impact.

As the telescope tracks the Moon, it is possible to see the stars moving from one exposure to the next, and then disappearing behind the Earthshine-lit Moon crescent. The extreme upper right is saturated by the Sun as the telescope started looking at the illuminated part of the Moon.

In the centre area, ugly reflections coming from the bright Moon through various optics on the way down to the camera are seen. The WIRCam camera was definitely not designed to have such a big and bright light source close by!

It is also possible to see the impact flash popping up on one of the frames in the upper right area. All the images shown here have been extracted form the large images used for this wide-angle animation. Courtesy of CFHT.