Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Look for “Flood” of News This Week About Water on the Moon

LCROSS Mission
Artist impression of LCROSS approaching the Moon. Credit: NASA

[/caption]

Almost five months ago, the LCROSS spacecraft had an abrupt end to its flight when it impacted a crater on the Moon’s south pole. But that was only the beginning of the work of principal investigator Tony Colaprete and the rest of the science teams, who have since been working non-stop to get their initial results out to the public. Look for a flood of ‘water on the Moon’ news to be announced at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference this week.

“The data set from LCROSS is a lot more interesting that we thought it would be,” said Colaprete, speaking on a “My Moon” webcast, sponsored by the Lunar and Planetary Institute. “A big part of our time has been making sure the data is properly calibrated. That takes a lot of time and effort, but the other side of the equation is understanding all the stuff you don’t understand in the data, and there was a lot we didn’t initially understand.”

The LCROSS team will present six papers, 11 posters and several oral sessions at the LPSC.
While the results are still under embargo, Colaprete was able to discuss the basics of what the science teams have found.

LCROSS impact site. Credit: NASA

One surprise for the teams was the low “flash” produced by the impact of the spacecraft. “We didn’t see a visible flash, even with sensitive instruments,” Colaprete said. “There was a delayed and muted flash and the impactor was essentially buried, with all the energy apparently deposited at a depth. So it is very likely that there were volatiles in the vicinity.”

The second surprise was the morphology of the impact plume. “We had reason to believe there would be high angle plume,” said Colaprete. “But we had a lower angle plume. We had a signal of a debris curtain in the spectrometers in LCROSS all the way down in the four minutes following the impact of the Centaur stage. That was corroborated with DIVINER measurements with LRO (a radiometer on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.) They were able to make some great observations of the ejecta cloud with DIVINER, and we had good signals with our instruments all the way down to impact.”

Most surprising, Colaprete said, was all the “stuff” that came up from the impact. “Everyone was really excited and surprised about all the stuff that we threw up with the impact.”

The LRO spacecraft was able to be tilted in orbit so the LAMP (Lyman-Alpha Mapping Project) instrument could observe impact plume. It observed a plume about 20 km tall, and observed a “footprint” of a plume up to 40 km above the Moon’s surface.
“They saw vapor cloud fill the ‘slit’ of the spectrometer’s observations at about 23 seconds after impact and it remained there through the entire flyby,” Colaprete said. “What that corresponds to is a hot vapor cloud of about 1000 degrees that was observed.”

A closer view of the moon as the LCROSS spacecraft approaches impact. Credit: NASA

Two exciting species found in the cloud were molecular hydrogen and mercury. “What is fantastic about that, is that there was an article written a couple of decades ago, regarding the possibility of mercury and water at the poles, and they said don’t drink the water!”

Colaprete said observing molecular hydrogen is spectacular because normally it doesn’t stay stable even at 40 Kelvin. The teams are still speculating how it was trapped and what form it was in. They found about 150 kg of molecular hydrogen in the plume.

All the elements found in the plume must be coming from cometary and asteroidal sources, Colaprete said. They also found water ice, sulfur dioxide, methane, ammonia, methanol, carbon dioxide, sodium and potassium. “We haven’t identified everything yet, but what we’re seeing is similar to what you would see in an impact of a comet, like what happened with the Deep Impact probe, which is exciting and surprising. The mineralogy in the dust itself that we kicked up corresponds to what was seen by M Cubed instrument, and also what we see in chondrite asteroids.”

One of the most pleasing aspects of this scientific process, Colaprete said, was the different teams being able to verify what other teams were finding.

“The concentration of hydrogen we saw in the regolith was higher than expected,” Colaprete said. “We ran the numbers again, and we said, ‘Oh, we can’t wiggle out of this answer.’ Then the PI for the LEND (Lunar Exploration Neutron Detector on LRO, which can acquire high-resolution neutron datasets) instrument confirmed that their numbers were entirely consistent with what we got. It was surprising because it wasn’t what we expected. But that is why you make measurements.”

“This should be a fun year as we pull this all together, and get it released to the public so we can get a lot more neurons looking at this,” Colaprete said. “I think this will really change our understanding of the Moon and how we think about it.”

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

More Jaw-Droppers from Cassini

The small moon Janus is almost hidden between the planet's rings and the larger moon Rhea.Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

[/caption]
The Cassini mission keeps churning out the hits, and here’s a collection of some of the latest stunning images released by the CICLOPS (Cassini Imaging for Central Operations) team. Above, the small moon Janus is almost hidden between the planet’s rings and the larger moon Rhea. The northern part of Janus can be seen peeking above the rings in this image of a “mutual event” where Janus (179 kilometers, 111 miles across) moved past Rhea (1,528 kilometers, 949 miles across). Mutual event observations such as this one, in which one moon passes close to or in front of another, help scientists refine their understanding of the orbits of Saturn’s moons. Click here to see a movie of the event.

Saturn's potato-shaped moon Prometheus is rendered in three dimensions in this close-up from Cassini. Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Grab your 3-D glasses for this one! This 3-D view is a close-up of Saturn’s potato-shaped moon Prometheus, showing the moon’s leading hemisphere. The image was created by combining two different black and white images that were taken from slightly different viewing angles. The images are combined so that the viewer’s left and right eye, respectively and separately, see a left and right image of the black and white stereo pair when viewed through red-blue glasses.

Saturn and Enceladus. Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

At first glance, you might think this scene simply shows a bright chunk of Saturn, along with a crescent of the moon Enceladus at top right. But a closer look at the center of the image reveals a dramatic surprise: plumes of water ice spew out from the famed fractures known as “tiger stripes” near the south pole of the moon. And one other surprise: Although it may appear that Enceladus (504 kilometers, 313 miles across) is in the background here, the moon actually is closer to the spacecraft than Saturn is. This view looks most directly toward the side of Enceladus that faces away from Saturn. North on Enceladus is up and rotated 1 degree to the left.

For more great images, check out the CICLOPS website, or NASA’s Cassini website.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Will NASA Send Robots to the Moon with “Project M?”

This video surfaced today on NASA Watch, but there’s not a lot of details about Project M. According to the America Space website, Project M is a program being developed out of the Johnson Space Center Engineering Directorate to put a lander on the moon with a robot. Supposedly, the mission could be done within a 1,000 days once the project got the go-ahead.
Continue reading “Will NASA Send Robots to the Moon with “Project M?””

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Big Full Moon and Mars Put on a Show Friday Night

An almost full Moon on Jan. 27, 2010. Credit and copyright: Alan Walters

[/caption]

If your skies are clear on Friday night, January 29, 2010, take advantage of one of the skywatching highlights of the year. A full Moon and Mars will be putting on a show, and the pair will be prominently close to each other in the sky. Plus, this Friday night’s full Moon is the biggest and brightest full Moon of the year. It’s a “perigee Moon,” as much as 14% wider and 30% brighter than other full Moons you’ll see later in 2010, according to Spaceweather.com. And, even though you’ve likely not gotten an email from an excited acquaintance relaying that Mars is really close to the Earth now — that is the case. Mars is at opposition on the 29th, which means it lines up opposite the Sun and is now the closest to Earth their orbits, and so will shine brighter.

The image above of the not-quite-full Moon from January 27, 2010 is shared by Universe Today reader Alan Walters, from Florida. You can see more of his wonderful photography of the night sky, launches and shuttle landings, Florida wildlife and more at Alan Walters Photography.

Positions of the Moon and Mars. Credit: McDonald Observatory

This image, courtesy of Stardate Online and the McDonald Observatory, shows the positions of the Moon and Mars in the night sky the next few evenings.

This is not a great opposition for Mars because it occurs around the time that Earth is closest to the Sun and Mars is farthest. The gap between the two planets will be a hefty 62 million miles (99 million km). The smallest possible distance at opposition is about 35 million miles (56 million km), which happened a back in August of 2003, and prompted the infamous emails that now surface every August, that Mars would be as big the full Moon, which of course, is not — and was not — true. Mars appeared more than twice as bright then as it will this year, but was still a star-like dot in the sky.

JPL is sponsoring a Facebook Event, Friday Night With the Moon and Mars, to heighten awareness of what a great sight it will be; plus its a great way to share in the experience with others online.

And for more information, see this Science@NASA article about the close encounter.

Sources: Stardate, Spaceweather.com

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Could Mars Dust Be “Levitated” Away?

The Spirit rover's solar panels were covered with dust until a gust of wind blew it off in 2006. Credit: NASA.

What could potentially be the biggest problem during a human mission to Mars? One NASA study says, surprisingly, that dust could be the number one risk for both humans and equipment. Human explorers could inhale the extremely fine but rough dust particles causing severe respiratory problems, and high winds on Mars could disperse the dust to coat solar panels, penetrate through seals and interfere with machinery. But scientists at the University of Vermont may have come up with a new way to combat dust: acoustic levitation. But will it work on Mars?

The researchers conducted a feasibility study to develop an acoustic dust removing system for use in space stations or habitations on the Moon or Mars. They found a high-pitched (13.8 kHz, 128 dB) standing wave of sound emitted from a 3 cm aperture tweeter and focused on a reflector 9 cm away was strong enough to dislodge and move extremely fine (<2 µm diameter) dust particles on the reflector surface. The sound waves overcome the van der Waals adhesive force that binds dust particles to the surface, and creates enough pressure to levitate the dust, which is then blown away. The team tested the system on a solar panel coated with mock lunar and Martian dust. The output of the clean panel was 4 volts, but when coated with dust it produced only 0.4 volts. After four minutes of acoustic levitation treatment the output returned to 98.4% of the maximum. Mars dust, although fine, is rougher that Earth dust, and likely is more similar to the dust that covers the Moon. The thin atmosphere on Mars means dust particles are not as rounded as they would be on Earth and can remain quite sharp and abrasive. [/caption] Mars dust, as we have found with the Mars rovers, has a high electrostatic charge, which means the fine dust clings to everything. The dust has severely decreased the efficiency of solar panels on the rovers, and over time has likely caused other problems with the mechanical operation on the rovers as well. We've had several articles here on Universe Today discussing the problems of dust on the solar panels of the Mars Exploration Rovers, and inevitably we get comments from readers suggesting "wiper blades" or other types of cleaning solutions for the solar panels. Amazingly, Mars itself has cleaned the rovers' solar panels several times with gusts of wind from the almost ubiquitous Martian dust devils. Acoustic levitation could be a solution, as it would be cheap and easily built. But there is a problem, and it is a big one: it will only work when it is sealed inside a space station or other habitation. It will not work where there is no atmosphere (such as the moon) or where the atmosphere is low pressure and thin (such as Mars) because sound is a pressure wave that travels through the air. So, we might be stuck with having to resort to wiper blades, or devising a way to mimic the dust devils and gusts of wind that have repeatedly benefited the Mars rovers. Unless we can figure out a way to get dust to levitate without sound. Nirvana anyone? Source: PhysOrg

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Searching for Moon Rocks Here on Earth

Moon rock samples from Apollo 11 given to the state of Illinois. Courtesy Illinois State Museum

[/caption]

Wanted: Moon rocks. Whereabouts: Unknown.

Alarmingly, some of our Moon rocks are missing! After the Apollo Moon landings, then-U.S. President Richard Nixon distributed approximately 250 displays containing lunar surface materials from Apollo 11 (1969) to the 50 states and various other countries around the world, and then later gave away 135 rock samples from Apollo 17 (1972). But NASA is finding that a surprisingly low percentage of these precious rock samples — which are encased in acrylic and mounted on a plaque along with the intended recipient’s flag — can actually be located.

Robert Pearlman at CollectSPACE.com has put together two lists, and the whereabouts of only 42 of the Apollo 11 rock samples are known, while only 61 of the Apollo 17 rocks have been located.

Earlier this week, an article in the Honolulu Advertiser rejoiced that Hawaii’s missing Moon rocks had been found in a locked cabinet. The rocks weren’t technically lost, an advisor to Hawaii’s governor said, they just didn’t know exactly where they were.

That seems to be the case with many other Moon rock samples. When the rocks were given away 40 years ago, they became the property of the countries or states who received them. As time passed, administrations or regimes changed, and the rocks were likely either lost, stolen or locked away who knows where.

Joseph Gutheinz, a professor with the University of Phoenix who teaches investigative techniques now has 28 students hunting down the missing moon rocks around the nation and the world.

Moon rock gifted to the state of Illinois. Courtesy Illinois State Museum.

I was happy to see the two Moon rock samples given to the state of Illinois – where I currently live—are safe and sound. And in response to the search by one of Gutheinz’s students, Lisa Moore, the Illinois State Museum decided to put the Moon rocks back on display, after a ten-year hiatus.

“The Moon rocks given to the State of Illinois haven’t been on display for about 10 years, at least in our permanent display,” said Chris Widga, Assistant Curator of Geology at the Illinois State Museum. “But when they are not on display they are at the Research and Collections Center that we have here in Springfield, or they do make it out one to three times a year to various rock, gem and mineral shows. So they usually get seen by quite a few people.”

But now they’ll be viewed by many more eyes, as they are in the lobby of the museum.

Close up of the Apollo 17 Moon rock. Courtesy Illinois State Museum

The sample from Apollo 11 is a Lucite ball with a four small rocks (more like pebble-sized) and the rock from Apollo 17 is one larger, about the size of a dime.

I asked Widga if beyond possibly picking up some SWAG at rock and mineral conventions, if the Illinois Moon rocks have had any other excitement such as going to an interesting location or being viewed by a celebrity.

“You know, I don’t think so,” he said. “They lead a fairly dull and boring life, which is probably good given some of their cousins have been lost. If we ever have a difficult time locating objects in our collection they usually are ones described as being from 1855 or something like that, further back in time and more difficult to track down.”

But I also found out there are two other Moon rock samples in Illinois that I wasn’t aware of. However, they are likely not Apollo Moon rocks, but perhaps meteorites, that may be from the Moon.

The Funk Prairie Home & Rock Museum in Shirley, Illinois has what they say are two Moon rock samples. They are part of the collection of Lafayette Funk, a member of the family who founded the Funk Seed Company.

“As far as we can tell, Mr. Funk got them from President Nixon,” said Bill Case, curator of the Funk Museum. “He was presented with them at a conference, and on the case it says, ‘Tektite from the Moon, established from the Third International Tektite Symposium, co-sponsored by the Smithsonian Institute and the Corning Museum of Glass’.”

Case said the rocks are in glass cases, and are pock-marked black tektite; one is tear-dropped shaped and about 3.5 inches long by 1.25 inches wide, and a half an inch thick. The other is more rounded, about 2 inches across, and one edge is chipped off to show the shiny, glassy black interior.

“Mr. Funk built a mineral museum, and he collected minerals from all over the world,” Case said. “He had wide-ranging contacts from all over the world and the Funks were advisers to various presidents, so it is not surprising that he would receive something from the President of the United States. In fact we have cases of things from various heads of states.”

Case said recently, a friend of Lafayette Funk who was on board the aircraft carrier with President Nixon when Apollo 11 splashed down gave the museum a photograph and confirmed that the time period when Lafayette got the Moon rocks was during the Apollo missions.

Close-up of the Apollo 11 Moon rocks. Courtesy Illinois State Museum.

According to Robert Pearlman of CollectSPACE, however, no individual was ever presented with an Apollo-recovered moon rock, not even a president, astronaut, religious figure or state leader. “The only moon rocks returned by astronauts ever given away were those presented as goodwill gifts to the citizens of the nations/states as listed within the two guides on collectSPACE,” Pearlman told Universe Today. “Tektites are not confirmed to be of lunar origin. They were believed to be from the Moon but other research suggests they are terrestrial material that was ejected back into space (by impact or volcanic eruption) and then reentered through the atmosphere.”

So, these rocks may or may not be from the Moon. If any readers have any insight on these rocks, we’d love to hear about it.

Unfortunately, some of the diplomatic gifts of Apollo lunar samples have found their way onto the black market. There’s no real way to know exactly how valuable the Moon rocks are, said Pearlman, because there are so few samples to judge the market. But Gutheinz believes they could be worth up to $10 million each.

Each Apollo mission brought back between 60 and 110 kg of lunar materials and the majority of Moon rocks are housed in the Lunar Receiving Laboratory at Johnson Space Center.

NASA’s education program loans out lunar samples to specially certified educator to use, and the restrictions for storing and using the educational samples are quite strict. It is regrettable that the diplomatic lunar samples didn’t have equal care and and restrictions.

For more info:

Illinois State Museum
Illinois State Museum’s Facebook page
Funk Prairie Home and Rock Museum

Additional Sources: CollectSPACE, Wired

Posted on by John Carl Villanueva

Sea of Tranquility

Apollo 11 landed on the Moon on July 20, 1969.

The Sea of Tranquility is the landing site of Apollo 11, the mission that gave mankind its first ever walk on the Moon.

Walk? Yes, that’s right. The Sea of Tranquility is not actually a sea, so Neil Armstrong didn’t have to walk on water. In fact, there isn’t a single sea on the lunar surface. The Sea of Tranquility is actually a lunar mare. Now, although the plural of ‘mare’, ‘maria’, is a Latin word that means ‘seas’, these maria don’t have water in them.

Lunar maria were named as such because early astronomers mistook these areas as seas. You see, when you look at the Moon, particularly its near side (well, we don’t actually get to see the far side), i.e., the side which practically constantly stares at us at night, you’ll notice certain features that are darker than others.

Compare the Moon to a grey-scale model of the Earth, and you’ll easily mistake those dark patches for seas. By the way, in case you’ve been reading article titles (not the entire article) on this site lately, you might recall us mentioning water on the Moon. There’s water alright … underneath the surface, so even assuming that they’re plentiful, they don’t qualify as seas.

Let’s go back to our main topic. Called Mare Tranquillitatis in Latin, the Sea of Tranquility is found in the Tranquillitatis basin of the Moon and is composed of basalt. Maria are seen from Earth as relatively dark because the lighter colored areas are much elevated than them and hence are better illuminated by light coming from the Sun.

Whenever color is processed and extracted from multiple photographs, the Sea of Tranquility gives off a slightly bluish shade. This is believed to be caused by the relatively higher metal content in the area.

The actual landing site of Apollo 11’s lunar module is now named Statio Tranquillitatis or Tranquility Base. To the north of that specific area you’ll find three small craters aptly named Aldrin, Collins, and Armstrong, the privileged crew of Apollo 11.

The lunar module of Apollo 11 was not the only spacecraft to have landed on the Sea of Tranquility. There was also the Ranger 8 spacecraft … although “crash landed” is a more appropriate term. It wasn’t a failed mission though, since it was really meant to impact the lunar surface after taking pictures throughout its flight before striking the Moon.

Some people actually think the Apollo missions, particularly the lunar landings, were part of an elaborate hoax. Click on this link to read what the Japanese SELENE Lunar Mission discovered.

NASA has a huge collection of reliable links related to the Apollo missions.

Episodes about the moon from Astronomy Cast. Lend us your ears!

Shooting Lasers at the Moon and Losing Contact with Rovers
The Moon Part I

Posted on by Jon Voisey

Measuring the Moon’s Eccentricity at Home

View of the moon at perigee and apogee

Caption: View of the moon at perigee and apogee

As a teacher, I’m always on the lookout for labs with simple setups appropriate for students. My current favorite is finding the speed of light with chocolate.

In a new paper recently uploaded to arXiv, Kevin Krisciunas from Texas A&M describes a method for determining the orbital eccentricity of the moon with a surprisingly low error using nothing more than a meter stick, a piece of cardboard and a program meant for fitting curves to variable stars.

This method makes use of the fact that the eccentricity can be determined from the ratio of the mean angular size of an object and one half of its amplitude. Thus, the main objective is to measure these two quantities.

Kevin’s strategy for doing this is to make use of a cardboard sighting hole which can slide along a meter stick. By peering through the hole at the moon, and sliding the card back and forth until the angular size of the hole just overlaps the moon. From there, the diameter of the hole divided by the distance down the meter stick gives the angular size thanks to the small angle formula (? = d/D in radians if D >> d).

To prevent systematic errors in misjudging as the card is slid forward until the size of the hole matches the moon, it is best to also approach it from the other direction; Coming from in from the far end of the meter stick. This should help reduce errors and in Kevin’s attempt, he found that he had a typical spread of ± 4 mm when doing so.

At this point, there is still another systematic error that must be taken into account: The pupil has a finite size comparable to the sighting hole. This will cause the actual angular size to be underestimated. As such, a correction factor is necessary.

To derive this correction factor, Kevin placed a 91 mm disk at a distance of 10 meters (this should produce a disk with the same angular size as the moon when viewed from that distance). To produce the best match, the slip of cardboard with the sighting hole should need to be placed at 681.3 mm on the meter stick, but due to the systematic error of the pupil, Kevin found it needed to be placed at 821 mm. The ratio of the observed placement to the proper placement provided the correction factor Kevin used (1.205). This would need to be calibrated for each individual person and would also depend on the amount of light during the time of observation since this also affects the diameter of the pupil. However, adopting a single correction factor produces satisfactory results.

This allows for properly taken data which can then be used to determine the necessary quantities (the mean angular size and 1/2 the amplitude). To determine these, Kevin used a program known as PERDET which is designed for fitting sinusoid curves to oscillations in variable stars. Any program that could fit such curves to data points using a ?2 fit or a Fourier analysis would be suitable to this end.

From such programs once the mean angular size and half amplitude are determined, their ratio provides the eccentricity. For Kevin’s experiment, he found a value of 0.039 ± 0.006. Additionally, the period he determined from perigee to perigee was 27.24 ± 0.29 days which is in excellent agreement with the accepted value of 27.55 days.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Where To Next for NASA’s Solar System Exploration?

From top to bottom, pictured are the moon, Venus, and an asteroid.From top to bottom, pictured (not to scale) are the moon, Venus, and an asteroid. These three celestial bodies from our solar system are possible candidates for NASA's next space venture.

[/caption]
Where is NASA going next to probe our solar system? The space agency announced today they have selected three proposals as candidates for the agency’s next space venture to another celestial body in our solar system. The proposed missions would probe the atmosphere composition and crust of Venus; return a piece of a near-Earth asteroid for analysis; or drop a robotic lander into a basin at the moon’s south pole to return lunar rocks back to Earth for study. All three sound exciting!

Here are the finalists:

Surface and Atmosphere Geochemical Explorer, or SAGE, mission to Venus would release a probe to descend through the planet’s atmosphere. During descent, instruments would conduct extensive measurements of the atmosphere’s composition and obtain meteorological data. The probe then would land on the surface of Venus, where its abrading tool would expose both a weathered and a pristine surface area to measure its composition and mineralogy. Scientists hope to understand the origin of Venus and why it is so different from Earth. Larry Esposito of the University of Colorado in Boulder, is the principal investigator.

Origins Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification Security Regolith Explorer spacecraft, called Osiris-Rex, would rendezvous and orbit a primitive asteroid. After extensive measurements, instruments would collect more than two ounces of material from the asteriod’s surface for return to Earth. The returned samples would help scientists better undertand and answer long-held questions about the formation of our solar system and the origin of complex molecules necessary for life. Michael Drake, of the University of Arizona in Tucson, is the principal investigator.

MoonRise: Lunar South Pole-Aitken Basin Sample Return Mission would place a lander in a broad basin near the moon’s south pole and return approximately two pounds of lunar materials for study. This region of the lunar surface is believed to harbor rocks excavated from the moon’s mantle. The samples would provide new insight into the early history of the Earth-moon system. Bradley Jolliff, of Washington University in St. Louis, is the principal investigator.

The final project will be selected in mid-2011, and for now, the three finalists will receive approximately $3.3 million in 2010 to conduct a 12-month mission concept study that focuses on implementation feasibility, cost, management and technical plans. Studies also will include plans for educational outreach and small business opportunities.

The selected mission must be ready for launch no later than Dec. 30, 2018. Mission cost, excluding the launch vehicle, is limited to $650 million.

“These are projects that inspire and excite young scientists, engineers and the public,” said Ed Weiler, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “These three proposals provide the best science value among eight submitted to NASA this year.”

The final selection will become the third mission in the program. New Horizons, launched in 2006, will fly by the Pluto-Charon system in 2015 then target another Kuiper Belt object for study. The second mission, called Juno, is designed to orbit Jupiter from pole to pole for the first time, conducting an in-depth study of the giant planet’s atmosphere and interior. It is slated for launch in August 2011.

Visit the New Frontiers program site for more information.

Posted on by Tammy Plotner

Santa Spied at Lunar North Pole…

Only one more day left until Christmas Eve, and astronomers have just discovered a unique feature on the lunar surface. Although accepted for many years to be a natural feature of selenography, modern astrophotography coupled with today’s high-powered telescopes have discovered an area near the lunar North Pole that’s apparently being used as a runway by a man in a red suit piloting an unusual spacecraft…

Be sure to spark the imaginations in your young viewers (or simply enjoy the holiday smile) as you show them the Alpine Valley!

Tonight’s outstanding feature will be the lunar Vallis Alpes. Located near the terminator in the lunar “North Pole”, this wonderful gash in the landscape very conspicuously cuts across the lunar Alps just west of crater Aristotle. As you view this 180 km long and (at points) less than 1 km wide feature, ask yourself how it was formed. While it looks very artificial with limited aperture and possibly like it could have been formed by a glancing blow from a small asteroid, it’s actually a volcanic/tectonic feature called a sinuous rille.

vallis_alpes_diets

If Santa were to look up along the southeast side of the Alpine Valley, he’d see a very tall linear cliff that’s slightly concave – like an amphitheater. To the northwest would be a small series of hills leading up the the grand lunar Alps. To the south would be another curved mountain ring about 16 or 17 miles in length, and from 3 to 4 miles in width. This forms the gorge, bordered on the east by sheer vertical cliffs, towering thousands of feet above the bottom of the valley. The valley floor is a flat, lava-flooded surface that is divided by a slender, cleft-like rille. Chances are this “little runway” was once a graben that which was flooded with magma.

But tonight? It’s the most special place not on Earth!

Many thanks to Wes Higgins for the holiday smiles and to Dietmar Hager for his equally splendid lunar photography.