To determine the location, the CFHT scientists used the position of the flash relative to a pair of reference craters visible as bright areas on the CFHT images, and a map of the Moon as seen from Mauna Kea at the time of the impact using the Moon Virtual Atlas. A simple triangulation allowed to pinpoint the impact area within a couple of kilometres.

The crash site determined from the CFHT observations is actually almost coinciding with the last ESA predictions before the impact. Courtesy of CFHT.

Credits: Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope / 2006

The blue star indicates the approximate impact site assuming that the coordinate system used to produce the reference Clementine Base Mosaic is correct. The yellow star indicates the approximate impact site using USGS's lunar control network revised with respect to the Clementine Base Mosaic. The distance separating the blue and yellow stars is about 7 kilometres.

In this image North is up.

Credits: USGS/ Mark Rosiek

The scene is observed from the exposure just before the impact to about 130 seconds later, corresponding to about ~10 images overall. In order to look at the dust generated by the impact, the scene from before the impact has been substracted from all the images. Each image is a snapshot taken over 10 seconds, with a gap of about 5 seconds in between the different exposures.

No processing to enhance the signal and minimize the background noise has been made on these images. Courtesy of CFHT.

Credits: Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope / 2006

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.

Credits: Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope / 2006