Since the Moon has no protective atmosphere, meteoroids hit the lunar surface at high speed. As a consequence of this, these particles are completely destroyed during these collisions, producing new craters and giving rise to brief flashes of light that can be recorded from Earth by means of telescopes (Fig. 1). These flashes, which last only a fraction of a second, are the consequence of the conversion of a part of the kinetic energy of the impactor into light. The fraction of this kinetic energy Ek that is transformed into luminous energy Er is called the “luminous efficiency” and is denoted by means of the Greek symbol η:
Impact flash produced by the collision of a meteoroid on the lunar surface. The event was recorded in the framework of the MIDAS survey on December 7, 2013, at 19 h 31 m 06 s UT
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Madiedo, J.M., Ortiz, J.L. (2018). Lunar Impact Events, Luminous Efficiency, and Energy of. In: Cudnik, B. (eds) Encyclopedia of Lunar Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05546-6_116-1
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