Watch a meteorite hit the Super Wolf Blood Moon during the eclipse on 21 January

An astronomer in Spain was waiting patiently for over ten years to capture visuals of a meteorite hitting the moon. After being patient for a decade, it finally happened, and during **the Super Blood Wolf Moon** eclipse on 21 January no less! A meteorite struck the moon and produced a flash of light when Madeido’s camera was rolling.

When a coppery-red tint covered the moon’s surface for an hour during the eclipse, some people spotted a tiny flash go off in broadcasts, New Scientist reported_. S_ome of the observers shared their suspicions that the flash was actually a meteorite impact. Lo and behold, they were bang on. Madiedo was one of the first to tweet about the find after capturing it on a camera.

La roca se desintegró durante el impacto, produciendo el destello que recogen las imágenes @AstroyFisica @PlanetarioMad @elpais_sociedad @EFEnoticias @abc_ciencia @miangulo_95 @CNNEE @elperiodico @LaVanguardia @UCC_UHU pic.twitter.com/99MSfOZIGk

— Jose Maria Madiedo (@jmmadiedo) January 22, 2019

Astronomers have captured impact flashes on the Moon in the past, but this is the first time an impact and lunar eclipse were captured at once. A system to monitor impact flashes was started in 1997, which eventually evolved to become the **Moon Impacts Detection and Analysis System** (MIDAS). Today, **MIDAS** uses software to monitor and identify the exact second that a meteorite hits the darkened portions of the moon’s surface. The program is run by the University of Huelva and the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalucia, of which Madiedo is a researcher. After the eclipse, MIDAS’s software automatically picked up the flash in one of the eight images that recorded visuals. This helps to confirm that the flashes seen by live stream-watchers were not just optical anomalies on camera sensors.

Madiedo estimated that the asteroid was roughly the size of a football, and will soon come out with a more comprehensive study of the impact. Meteorites hitting the moon so apparently to us are rare, even if impacts of a much smaller happen nearly every week. **NASA** has seismometers placed on the moon to pick up on these smaller impacts. In 2013, a 400-kilogram meteorite struck the Moon and made a crater that was 130 feet wide – the largest impact ever recorded. Another entry to add to the stunning animation released this week by the Southwest Research Institute of the **biggest asteroid impacts on the moon** over the past billion years. There were 111 of them in all, and each of the 111 recreated with animation and music.