On 11 September 2013 the "Moon Impacts Detection and Analysis System" (MIDAS) camera captured a bright 8-second long flash on the central nearside of the Moon. This was the brightest event captured so far by the MIDAS team, and they estimated that the crater should be between 46 and 56 meters in diameter. The LROC team targeted the reported coordinates (17.167°S, 339.599°E) of the flash and acquired several images over a few months until the crater was found in images acquired on 16 March 2014 and 13 April 2014!
Fortunately there was a NAC image of the target area acquired before the impact, so finding the new crater was relatively easy once an "after" image with comparable lighting to the "before" image was acquired. As it turns out the new crater is ~34 meters (112 feet) in diameter and is located at 17.167°S, 339.599°E, only 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) from the original telescope-based prediction. In the before-after animation you can see ejecta effects from the crater extend out more than 500 meters in all directions! See also LROC NAC image M1149637354L (16 March 2014).
Wide Angle Camera morphology basemap overlaid with color-coded LROC GLD100 topography centered on the 11 September 2013 impact crater. The large crater just visible in the lower left is 60 kilometer diameter crater Bullialdus [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].
View the full-resolution NAC frame below!
Revisit the LROC NAC image of new crater formed on 17 March 2013.
Read the paper describing the 11 September 2013 observation (Madiedo et al., 2014)
Published by Mark Robinson on 15 September 2014