moon tagged posts

If our eyes could see high-energy radiation called gamma rays, the Moon would appear brighter than the Sun! That’s how NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has seen our neighbor in space for the past decade...

Particles from the sun are constantly hitting the surface of mercury. Credit: NASA, montage: TU Wien

The planets and moons of our solar system are continuously being bombarded by particles hurled away from the sun. On Earth this has hardly any effect, apart from the fascinating northern lights, because the dense atmosphere and the magnetic field of the Earth protect us from these solar wind particles. But on the Moon or on Mercury things are different: There, the uppermost layer of rock is gradually eroded by the impact of sun particles.

New results of the TU Wien now show that previous models of this process are incomplete. The effects of solar wind bombardment are in some cases much more drastic than previously thought...

During its flight to Jupiter in 1992, NASA’s Galileo spacecraft returned images of the Earth and Moon. Separate images were combined to generate this view. NASA/JPL/USGS

For anyone who has ever wished there were more hours in the day, geoscientists have some good news: Days on Earth are getting longer. A new study that reconstructs the deep history of our planet’s relationship to the moon shows that 1.4 billion years ago, a day on Earth lasted just over 18 hours. This is at least in part because the moon was closer and changed the way Earth spun around its axis.

“As the moon moves away, the Earth is like a spinning figure skater who slows down as they stretch their arms out,” explains Stephen Meyers, professor of geoscience at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and co-author of the stud...

The Marius Hills Skylight, as observed by the Japanese SELENE/Kaguya research team. Credit: NASA/Goddard/Arizona State University

A study published in Geophysical Research Letters confirms the existence of a large open lava tube in the Marius Hills region of the moon, which could be used to protect astronauts from hazardous conditions on the surface. No one has ever been on the moon longer than 3 days, largely because space suits alone can’t shield astronauts from its elements: extreme temperature variation, radiation, and meteorite impacts. Unlike Earth, the moon has no atmosphere or magnetic field to protects its inhabitants.

The safest place to seek shelter is the inside of an intact lava tube, according to the study...