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Moon Grooves Mystery solved

The moon’s grooves mystery has finally been solved.

The moon grooves mystery has finally been solved. Billions of years back, a baby planet the size of New Jersey hit the moon and created the strange grooves that scar the lunar surface, according to a new study.

This discovery could tell us more about the violent impact era, in the early stages of Earth formation, when it was bombarded with foreign asteroids and proto-planets, just like the rest of the solar system.

Experts looked at the area around Mare Ibrium – Latin for “The Sea of Showers”. This is a dark spot on the northwest side of the moon or the right eye of the “Man in the Moon”. Mare Ibrium stretches within the Ibrium Basin. Earlier studies have shown that the 720 mile-wide basin was carved by a giant ancient cosmic impact, only to be later filled with lakes of lava which cooled into dark rock.

Mare Ibrium is enclosed by grooves and crevasses big enough to be observed from Earth, even with smaller telescopes. These features, taken together are known as the Ibrium Sculpture. They are found mostly on the Ibrium Basin’s south side.

Other elements of the Ibrium Sculpture resemble spokes on a wheel, as they radiate from the center of the basin. Earlier studies have shown that the Ibrium Sculpture took form because of a giant asteroid collision, around 3.8 billion years back. The asteroid was apparently traveling N-W to the S-E and impacted the moon at an oblique angle, debris spreading along this trajectory.

Aside from the features existent in the Ibrium Basin’s center, prior research discovered yet another set of crevasses in the Ibrium Sculpture that did not spread like the others did. They looked like they came from the North-western region of the basin.

The second bunch of moon grooves was a real mystery, as nobody had any idea where they came from. Now, David Crawford of Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico and his team have come up with an explanation solving the mystery.

Their research suggests that the Ibrium Basin and Sculpture were formed by a huge asteroid, big enough to be considered a proto-planet, or baby planet.

The asteroid may have been about the length of New Jersey. Some of it even continued its trajectory, while most of it has left debris, grooves and crevasses on the surface of the moon.

Image Source – Wikipedia

NASA Shares Spectacular Pic of Earthrise over Moon

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A revisited version of the first color image of an Earthrise over moon, which was taken in 1968.

As of recently, NASA shared spectacular Earthrise over Moon after researchers had compiled several high-resolution images taken by its Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) a couple of months ago.

In the recently released photo, we can see a sunlit side of our planet in the background and a desolated moonscape in the foreground, and the contrast is simply breathtaking. Noah Petro, a researcher involved in the LRO mission, recently noted that the composite image is ‘simply stunning.’

Petro added that the image brings back old memories of the spectacular ‘Blue Marble’ photo snapped by Apollo 17 astronauts more than four decades ago. Both pictures show the African continent prominently in the image.

But the photo also resembles the ‘Earthrise’ pic taken by crew members during the Apollo 8 mission when they entered the lunar orbit on Christmas Eve, 1968. Apollo 8 was the first human mission that managed to go beyond Earth’s orbit.

Former Vice President Al Gore said about about the 1968 picture that it inspired the modern-day conservationist movement worldwide. Gore explained that, after 18 months from the official release of the photograph, world celebrated the first Earth Day.

Additionally, the environmental awareness triggered by the breath-taking photo led to several pieces of legislation in the U.S. including the Clean Air Act and the National Environmental Policy Act.

But that picture was not the first of its kind. Lunar Orbiter 1 had snapped the first ‘Earthrise’ a in 1966. Yet, that photo didn’t have a major impact since it was rendered in black and white.

NASA explained that the latest Earthrise photograph is the work of a team that managed to gather pictures from two of LRO’s optical instruments during its voyage around the moon. The photos were snapped over the course of a single day, on Oct. 12, from an 83-mile distance above the lunar soil. The orbiter was able to capture the Compton crater which is located on the natural satellite’s dark side which is never visible from Earth.

NASA researchers explained that we can never see the moon’s far side from ground because our planet and its moon are tidally locked. For the same reason, an astronaut that stands on the lunar surface could never experience and ‘Earthrise’ or an ‘Earthset.’ Astronauts that walked on the moon said that they could see the Earth, and continents moving on its surface, but it never changed its position on the sky.

The recent picture was posted on NASA’s official website on Dec. 18.
Image Source: Wikimedia

Unusual Total Lunar Eclipse At Dawn on April 4th

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A total lunar eclipse, called the “blood Moon,” will be visible in North America, East Asia, the Pacific, Australia and New Zealand on Saturday, April 4, 2015.

The ”blood Moon” is a rare form of lunar eclipse that happens when the Earth casts its shadow on the moon and also blocks the sunlight. The light emitted by the Sun still light up the surface of the Moon in spite of the blockage, but gives Earth’s natural satellite a strange color, varying from bright red to brown.

The lunar eclipse is expected to last for about three hours and 29 minutes while the total eclipse will be visible for five minutes, according to Time and Date. The Moon is in the middle of a lunar tetrad, which happens when four total lunar eclipses occur in a row. The lunar eclipse that will occur on April 4, 2015 is the third eclipse of this event. The lunar tetrad also had two prior eclipses on April 14-15, 2014 and October 7-8 2014, while a fourth eclipse is expected to occur on September 8, 2015.

The schedule of this lunar is as follows. Penumbra, which happens when the Moon enters the outer fringe of the Earth’s shadow, is the start of the lunar eclipse. Since the shade is still weak, penumbra cannot be seen with the naked eye. When the Moon advances inwards, the shading becomes much stronger. This marks the beginning of the umbra second stage or the partial eclipse.

The third stage is the total eclipse where the Moon is completely covered by Earth’s shadow. The Moon will then glow in red, orange or brown color. Two factors influence the color of the eclipse. The first is the state of the Earth’s atmosphere. The second is the amount of the surface of the Moon that enters the umbra phase as it passes through. The last two stages, the fourth and fifth, respectively, of the lunar eclipse are next, and refer to the period in which the moon re-emerges into the sunlight, ending the eclipse.

Unlike a total solar eclipse, which can only be observed from a small path across the Earth, the lunar eclipse can be seen by half of the world. Also, compared to the solar eclipse, for the lunar eclipse you don’t need special protection for the eyes to safely observe it.

Image Source: Sky and Telescope

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