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On Sunday night
we have two cool events that are happening at the same time. We have a lunar
eclipse, when the moon passes into the shadow of the Earth. So we'll go
from being very bright to turning this beautiful red color. The effect of the sunrises
and sunsets of the Earth being projected onto the lunar surface. We also have a supermoon
the closest full moon of the year. So those two events are occuring at the same time.
And that's a very rare event. Hasn't happened since 1982, won't happen
again until 2033. So Sunday night's a really great opportunity to go out
and see a beautiful moon change right before your eyes. It's going to be a
beautiful show.
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The moon will be fairly high in the sky when it goes into eclipse.
You don't need to worry about too far away from trees, but you want to be able to have a pretty good
view to the sky and just sit back and enjoy the show.
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Measuring the temperature of the surface of the moon especially during the eclipse is a really
important thing because with that measurement we can learn about the
characteristics, the properties of the surface of the moon. And particularly during an eclipse
we learn about the upper, upper most surface. So what we see is that surface
that stays warm longer generally have larger blocks or
smaller pebbles and things like that. Where surfaces that cool off very quickly have
smaller sand-sized particals and so by measuring how the surface
of the moon, the temperature of the surface of the moon changes during an eclipse, we learn about
the makeup of the surface of the moon. How the structure
of the surface. And we can't do that normally. So it's these
eclipses that give us a really, really unique opportunity to make specific
measurements about the surface that we just can't do at any other time.
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So the Lunar Reconnaissance
Orbiter has been at the moon now for over six years. And in those six years we've
learned an incredible amount about the surface of the moon and the lunar
environment. What we've seen that's most surprising that the moon is in fact a dynamic place
We're seeing changes on the surface on the moon that are occuring in the time that LRO has been
at the moon. We're seeing new impact craters that have formed in the six years that we've been there.
We're seeing the evidence of migrating water across the surface
Not a lot of water. A small amount of water. But still the view that the moon is a
static unchanging place is now completely different.
With the eyes of LRO right at the surface of the moon, we're able to see that
there are incredible amount of changes going on revealing that the moon is
far more dynamic than we ever knew before.
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Some of the coolest things that we've learned about the moon is that there's been
evidence for volcanism that occured on the moon far more recently than
we ever knew before. So for instance before LRO launched we thought that
volcanism on the moon ended about a billion years ago. Now we have evidence for
that volcanism may have occured as recently as recently as a hundred million year ago or perhaps even
more recently than that. And that's surprising because that changes our entire view of how the interior heat
of the moon has disapated over time.
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LRO data and the results from LRO have completely rewritten
the textbooks of what we know about the moon. I think the moon
that we knew before LRO is now completely different. Of course the moon hasn't changed it's just
our understanding of it. But the data that we've gotten from LRO
has led to profound changes in how we view the moon and how
view the moon in the future. And you know the great thing about
the LRO data is that we're studying it now, but it's going to be
a data set and a legacy that will last for generations to come in our understanding
of the moon.
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People should care about the moon because it's our neighbor
in the sky. It's actually very close to the Earth compared to the
distances to other objects in the solar system. And by studying the moon we can learn a lot
about the history of the Earth. You know if you look surface of the moon there are
places on the moon where we have rocks that are four-and-a-half billion
years old. And so by looking at the moon we can learn about the earliest history of the solar
system. The record of that portion of time in our solar system is almost all but
gone from the Earth. So in order to understand what was happening just after the
planets formed studying the surface of the moon is one of the most interesting and best
places to do that. So when we look at moon we're really looking into
the deep history of the Earth as well and I think from that we can learn a lot about
how our planet has changed and how all planets have changed over time.