Asteroid As Big As New Jersey Formed Right Eye Of The ‘Man in the Moon,’ New Study Finds

A new study has found that one of the biggest craters on the surface of the moon also referred to as the right eye of the "Man in the Moon" was the result of an asteroid which may have been three times bigger than previously estimated.

Dubbed the Imbrium Basin, the crater in question, which measures roughly 750 miles (1,207 kilometers) across, is so huge that it is visible from Earth even with a small telescope. The massive crater, is surrounded by grooves and gashes and can be seen as a dark blotch in the northwestern part of the lunar surface.

According to the study, led by Brown University professor Pete Schultz, it was around 3.6 billion years ago that a 180-miles-wide "protoplanet," almost about the length of New Jersey, slammed into the moon at a speed of at 22,000 miles per hour to form the right eye of the "Man in the Moon" as huge as 300 miles long. Previously, based on computer models, it was estimated that the asteroid was just about 50 miles (80.4 kilometers) in diameter, reported BBC.

For the investigation, the research team performed experiment using a Vertical Gun Range at the Nasa Ames Research Centre. To recreate the collision in the lab, they used a hyper-velocity canon, almost three-storey-high, to fire small spheres of metal travelling at a speed of 16,000 miles per hour into a curved aluminium plate.

The research team filmed the entire collision using high-speed cameras that go up to one million frames a second. By analyzing the footage and debris pattern, the researchers calculated the size of the asteroid that smashed into the Moon, reported Daily Mail.

The researchers explained that the grooves on the southeastern side suggest that the asteroid came from the northwest and hit the surface at an angle of about 30 degrees. They pointed out that the second set of grooves was likely created by shards of the impactor that broke off after it first struck the lunar surface.

The researchers are now planning to use the same method to determine the approximate size of the asteroids that formed huge craters on other planets.

Details of the study have been published in the journal Nature.