+- Scivillage.com Casual Discussion Science Forum (https://www.scivillage.com)
+-- Forum: Culture (https://www.scivillage.com/forum-49.html)
+--- Forum: Weird & Beyond (https://www.scivillage.com/forum-123.html)
+--- Thread: Transient Lunar Phenomena (/thread-7185.html)
Transient Lunar Phenomena - Yazata - Jun 6, 2019
There's already a thread by CC that mentions this, but it's combined with something about a shark attack and I think that this deserves a thread of its own.
Transient Lunar Phenomena are transitory things observed on the Moon, such as color changes, clouds or lights. They have been reported from the Middle ages up till the present. Famous astronomers like William Herschel reported them and they have been observed close up from space by astronauts on several Apollo missions. They total more than a thousand reports, often by professional astronomers. Spectra have even been taken in a few cases.
This should interest MR... these look like excellent scientific anomalies.
From Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transient_lunar_phenomenon
Survey Article from The Encyclopedia of Lunar Science
https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/978-3-319-05546-6_5-1.pdf
From the Astrophysical Journal (15 pp):
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0004-637X/697/1/1/pdf
Longer (35 pp) unpublished version of the same paper:
https://arxiv.org/pdf/0706.3949.pdf
Old NASA catalog of Transient Lunar Phenomena
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19780022214.pdf
Paper from JPL and USGS that hypothesizes that they may be associated with volcanic outgassing.
https://trs.jpl.nasa.gov/bitstream/handle/2014/15049/00-1055.pdf?sequence=1
More, from NASA Goddard this time:
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1975Moon...14..187C
From the UK this time:
http://the1963aristarchusevents.homestead.com/Possible_physical_processes_causing_transient_lunar_events.pdf
Paper by Patrick Moore from J. Royal Astronomical Soc.
http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-iarticle_query?bibcode=1971QJRAS..12...45M&db_key=AST&page_ind=0&plate_select=NO&data_type=GIF&type=SCREEN_GIF&classic=YES
Hypothesis about fine particles carried aloft by outgassing
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1980JBAA...90..219M
Paper about a NASA program to observe Transient Lunar Phenomena by J. Allen Hynek! (MR will like that.)
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19760016037.pdf
Very interesting 82 page analysis of TLPhenomena reported from 557 to 1997.
http://users.aber.ac.uk/atc/tlp/cameron.pdf
RE: Transient Lunar Phenomena - Magical Realist - Jun 6, 2019
Volcanic outgassing sounds like a plausible explanation. We easily forget that the moon's core is molten too.