"There's more than one way to watch a meteor shower," begins a new Science at NASA story. "One, the old-fashioned way: Find a dark place with starry skies and count the meteors streaking overhead. Two, the new way: Find a dark place with starry skies and then completely ignore the meteors. Instead, watch the Moon. That's where the explosions are."

For centuries, astronomers tried and failed to get solid evidence of the little flare of light that ought to result from a meteoroid hitting the Moon's night side. But that was before modern low-light imaging. About 115 of these events have now been recorded on video, simultaneously from different locations to ensure that they are not point meteors in Earth's atmosphere or glitches in the video chips.

Lunar-meteor watching has become its own little subsection of amateur astronomy. Observers added several more of these events to the archive during the Perseid meteor shower three weeks ago.

I find this too cool for words. A meteoroid just a few inches across will hit with the energy of roughly a hundred pounds of TNT, creating a flash in the lunar vacuum clearly visible to a videocamera on an amateur telescope in a backyard a quarter million miles away. The flashes fade out in less than a second, but they often last for enough video frames to provide good confirmation.

Read more at the NASA story by Tony Philips, which has further links. NASA also has prepared a FAQ and telescope tips for would-be lunar meteor hunters who'd like to get started.