moon tagged posts

The Moon was once covered by an Ocean of Molten Rock, data from India’s Space Mission suggests

The similarity in composition of new and old lunar samples suggests a magma ocean covered the Moon early in its history. Nasa/Goddard Space Flight Center

Data from India’s recent Chandrayaan-3 mission supports the idea that an ocean of molten rock once covered the moon. Scientists from the mission have published their new findings in the journal Nature.

On August 23, 2023, a lander called Vikram successfully touched down on the lunar surface. Controllers then deployed a rover called Pragyan, which had been stowed on Vikram, to explore the landing site.

The location where Vikram touched down was further south than any other landing craft had previously been on the moon. It gave scientists an insight into the geology of the moon that had not yet been sampled.

Pragyan’s measurem...

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The Moon Turned Itself Inside Out, Scientists Confirm

Small Bang
Scientists seem to have figured out why the Moon is made up of such weird and heavy rocks: way back in the day, it turned itself inside out.

For decades now, scientists have pretty much agreed that the Moon formed from debris that flew off the young Earth when another planet smashed into it about 4.5 billion years. That cosmic wreckage “coalesced, cooled and solidified” to form the Moon as we know it today, researchers from the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory wrote in a press release — but what happened next is something of a “choose-your-own adventure,” as the scientists describe it.

In a new paper published in the journal Nature Geoscience, the LPL researchers found that the surprisingly high concentration of titanium found in Moon rocks, suc...

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The Metalens meets the Stars – Large, All-glass Metalens Images Sun, Moon and Nebulae

image of the metalens and camera
This 10-centimeter-diameter glass metalens can image the sun, the moon and distant nebulae with high resolution. (Credit: Capasso Lab/Harvard SEAS)
 

Metalenses have been used to image microscopic features of tissue and resolve details smaller than a wavelength of light. Now they are going bigger.

Researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have developed a 10-centimeter-diameter glass metalens that can image the sun, the moon and distant nebulae with high resolution.

It is the first all-glass, large-scale metalens in the visible wavelength that can be mass produced using conventional CMOS fabrication technology.

The research is published in ACS Nano.

“The ability to accurately control the size of tens of billions of nanopill...

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New Findings Suggest Moon may have Less Water than Previously Thought

Graph with colored patches showings the extent of PSRs 3.3 billion years ago (red), 2.1 billion years ago (green) and close to present-day (blue) with current topography
Courtesy of Schörghofer/Rufu The scientists used AstroGeo22 and LOLA height measurements to calculate the age of the Moon’s permanently shadowed regions near its poles. Colored patches show the extent of PSRs 3.3 billion years ago (red), 2.1 billion years ago (green) and close to present-day (blue) with current topography. These findings suggest that current estimates for cold-trapped ices are too high.

Moon’s permanently shadowed regions are younger than previously estimated. A team including Southwest Research Institute’s Dr. Raluca Rufu recently calculated that most of the Moon’s permanently shadowed regions (PSRs) are at most around 3.4 billion years old and can contain relatively young deposits of water ice...

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