A Mysterious Plume of Smoke Appears Near the Moon

On Sunday, November 1st, 2009, at approximately 6:15PM EST, a friend of mine pointed out a very strange phenomenon in the sky. There was a very strange, dark plume of smoke which seemed to be coming off the moon. Then, minutes later, the plume was gone. At first, I wondered if what we were seeing was the explosive device which landed on the moon some time before (since, in space, light tends to take a while to reach the earth from great distances). But then I did the math. The light from the moon takes far less than a week to reach Earth, in fact, it only takes a little more than a second, since the moon is only 238,855 miles away, and light travels at a rate of 186,282 miles per second. So, what was that enormous plume of debris? Did something go horribly wrong with the experiment? Why hasn't the news mentioned anything about it? I attempted to take a picture of the phenomenon, but it was too dark. Instead, enjoy this diagram which looks like it was put together by a 2nd grader.

Labels read as follows: "The plume came off the moon at an angle, then seemed to drift downward" ; "The Moon was full or close to full on that night" ; "The light of the moon reflected off the back side of the plume"