Joe Orman replied: >For those who haven't heard, a few weeks ago it was announced that = >Stuart's Flash was tied to a fresh-looking crater in images from the = >Clementine lunar orbiter ("NASA Solves Half-Century Old Moon Mystery"): >http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/releases/2003/23.cfm =20 >It has more recently been demonstrated that this crater also appears in = >pre-1953 images, so it could NOT have been caused by the flash: >http://skyandtelescope.com/news/current/article_890_1.asp >I assume the purpose of the ALPO request is to identify other craters in = >the area that could be associated with the flash. Thanks for clarifying things Joe. I should have explained more. From yesterday's ALPO message: "If any of you want to take part in capturing images of the region of the Moon where the Stuart flash occurred, under identical illumination, then the following finder chart may be useful for TONIGHT for east coast US observers:" and a few days ago "The bright feature identified by Buratti and Johnson is not the result of the phenomenon observed by Leon Stuart on November 15, 1953. The Buratti-Johnson Feature has been identified and measured on terrestrial photographs taken in 1919 and 1937. In addition, the center of the circular bright spot on the Stuart photograph lies approximately 32 km WNW of the Buratti-Johnson Feature. The Buratti-Johnson Feature has been identified, and its position measured, on a Clementine image mosaic and upon four terrestrial photographs (where L = a linear position fit with 3 coefficients and Q = a quadratic fit with 6 coefficients): Source (date) Longitude Latitude RMS Uncertainty deg. deg. +/- Clementine Digital Image Model, CD-ROM, Vol. 13, BI03N357.jpg (1994, L) -2.28 +3.91 1.2 km Mt. Wilson Obs. 100-in Refl., Pease Photo. 97 (1919 SEP 13, L) -2.32 +3.90 0.9 Lick Obs. 36-in Refr., Moore-Chappell Photo. 59 (1937 OCT 22, L) -2.31 +3.90 1.2 Catalina Obs. 61-in Refl., Photo. 1900 (1966 MAY 28, Q) -2.29 +3.98 0.3 Catalina Obs. 61-in Refl., Photo. 2139 (1966 JUN 03, Q) -2.33 +3.89 0.5 MEAN -2.31 +3.92 0.6 The center of the bright spot photographed by Leon Stuart in 1953 was measured from a scanned image of the vicinity of the flash kindly provided by J. Stuart and L. Abbey, with a quadratic fit to 8 nearby features giving a longitude of -3.31 deg. and a latitude of +4.30 deg., placing it about 32 km WNW of the Buratti-Johnson Feature. As there is only one photograph of the flash, the accuracy of its position is assessed from the RMS errors of the 8 control points used, giving +/- 2.2 km. Thus the position of the flash center is approximately 14 standard deviations from the mean of the positions of the Buratti-Johnson Feature. It has been suggested that the discrepancy is due to atmospheric "seeing" and/or to the flash fireball being above the lunar surface. In the first case, the seeing displacement would have to be about 2/3 the width of the crater Pallas, an amount inconsistent with the sharpness of features in the photograph and with the +/-2.2-km RMS errors in the apparent positions of the 8 control points. In the second case, although terrestrial fireballs (e.g., from nuclear tests) do rise above the earth's surface, this is due to their being buoyed by an ascending column of superheated air. In the near-vacuum of the moon, the fireball should form an approximate hemisphere centered on the surface at the point of impact. Also, the flash was very near the center of the moon's apparent disk, so it would have to be many kilometers above the lunar surface to show a 32-km displacement. (J. Westfall, March 5, 2003)" Jeff Jeff Hopkins HPO SOFT ********************************************************************* Phoenix, Arizona Atlanta, Georgia 7812 West Clayton Drive 12170 Boxwood Circle Phoenix, AZ 85033-2439 U.S.A. Alpharetta, GA 30005 U.S.A. (623) 849-5889 (Fax) (770) 619-3322 (Phone/Fax) www.hposoft.com & amug.org/~hposoft dataman.home.mindspring.com 4th Dimension Partner FileMaker Pro Expert BASIC/C++ Programmer & Web Site/e-commerce Site Development Over 25 years of Computer, Programming and Database Development Experience -- See message header for info on list archives or unsubscribing, and please send personal replies to the author, not the list.