Photo: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera captured a boulder on the Moon that decided to go on a little journey. Looking at the track, you'd think that this happened recently. Well, in geologic times perhaps:

The lonely journey of this large boulder is apparent from its track in a sloping regolith surface. A casual glance might suggest that it happened last week, or even that its rolling might resume at any moment. However, closer inspection will detect a few craters that clearly superpose and therefore post-date the track, showing that this 9-meter diameter boulder stopped rolling some time ago. Impacts are used in this way to provide a relative sense for the timing of events on planetary surfaces across the solar system. The procedure assumes a steady flux of impacting bodies in each size range, with smaller impacts being much more frequent than large impacts.

Though long ago to humans, however, this boulder's journey was made in geologically recent times. Studies suggest that regolith development from micrometeorite impacts will erase tracks like these over time intervals of tens of millions of years. If rate estimates are accurate, this boulder track might not be older than 50-100 million years. Eventually its track will be erased completely.

That's how a lunar rock roll, dudes: Link

One of NASA's Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) lunar spacecraft has finally captured the far side (or the dark side, if you're poetically inclined) of the Moon on video. So far, no Cybertronian spacecraft was found.

In the video, the north pole of the moon is visible at the top of the screen as the spacecraft flies toward the lunar south pole. One of the first prominent geological features seen on the lower third of the moon is the Mare Orientale, a 560-mile-wide (900 kilometer) impact basin that straddles both the moon's near and far side.

The clip ends with rugged terrain just short of the lunar south pole. To the left of center, near the bottom of the screen, is the 93-mile-wide (149 kilometer) Drygalski crater with a distinctive star-shaped formation in the middle. The formation is a central peak, created many billions of years ago by a comet or asteroid impact.

Link

What’s more awesome than move special effects? The real thing! This footage of Earthrise over the moon was taken from the Apollo X mission in 1969. All it needed was the proper soundtrack. -via Boing Boing

The action begins shortly before sunset. Around 4:30 pm to 5:00 pm local time, just as the sky is assuming its evening hue, Venus will pop into view, glistening bright in the deepening twilight. No more than 6 degrees to the right lies the crescent Moon, exquisitely slender, grinning like the Cheshire cat with his head cocked at humorous attention. This is a wonderful time to look; there are very few sights in the heavens as splendid as Venus and the Moon gathered close and surrounded by twilight blue.

But don’t go inside yet, because the view is about to improve. As the sky fades to black, a ghostly image of the full Moon materializes within the horns of the lunar crescent. This is caused by Earthshine, a delicate veil of sunlight reflected from our own blue planet onto the dusty-dark lunar terrain. Also known as “the Da Vinci glow,” after Leonardo da Vinci who first understood it 500 years ago, Earthshine pushes the beauty of the conjunction over the top.

Meanwhile, Jupiter will be looking down on it all from a perch overhead in the constellation Pisces. In ascending order, Jupiter, Venus and the Moon are the three brightest objects in the night sky, able to pierce city lights and even thin clouds. Almost everyone, everywhere will be able to see them.

Link

(Image credit: Flickr user ozgurmulazimoglu)

The most detailed moon map yet has been constructed from images by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). Technicians from Arizona State University compiled the map which shows elevation changes as small as 100 meters.

The near-global topographic map was constructed from 69,000 WAC stereo models and covers the latitude range 79°S to 79°N, 98.2% of the entire lunar surface. Due to persistent shadows near the poles it is not possible to create a complete stereo based map at the highest latitudes. However, another instrument onboard LRO called LOLA excels at mapping topography at the poles. Since LOLA ranges to the surface with its own lasers, and the LRO orbits converge at the poles, a very high resolution topographic model is possible, and can be used to fill in the WAC “hole at the pole.” The WAC topography was produced by LROC team members at the German Aerospace Center.

Read more about the map at NASA. Link -via Laughing Squid

Image: NASA/JPL-CalTech/Space Science Institute

Look closely at the photo above and you can pick out 5 of Saturn's 60 natural satellites (Janus, Pandora, Enceladus, Mimas, and Rhea) as well as the planet's iconic rings:

A quintet of Saturn's moons come together in the Cassini spacecraft's field of view for this portrait.

Janus (179 kilometers, or 111 miles across) is on the far left. Pandora (81 kilometers, or 50 miles across) orbits between the A ring and the thin F ring near the middle of the image. Brightly reflective Enceladus (504 kilometers, or 313 miles across) appears above the center of the image. Saturn's second largest moon, Rhea (1,528 kilometers, or 949 miles across), is bisected by the right edge of the image. The smaller moon Mimas (396 kilometers, or 246 miles across) can be seen beyond Rhea also on the right side of the image.

This view looks toward the northern, sunlit side of the rings from just above the ringplane. Rhea is closest to Cassini here. The rings are beyond Rhea and Mimas. Enceladus is beyond the rings.

The image was taken in visible green light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on July 29, 2011. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 1.1 million kilometers (684,000 miles) from Rhea and 1.8 million kilometers (1.1 million miles) from Enceladus. Image scale is 7 kilometers (4 miles) per pixel on Rhea and 11 kilometers (7 miles) per pixel on Enceladus.

Link - via PopSci

Astronauts get hungry too, and they can't all eat Astronaut Ice Cream Sandwich and drink Tang all the time. Thankfully, there's Domino's Pizza newest planned expansion:

The company’s Japanese arm has launched a website dedicated to its “Moon Branch Project.” It’s all a joke (we think) to celebrate the company’s 25th anniversary in the Asian country.

But for fun and games, it’s remarkably detailed. There’s Scott K. Oelkers, Domino’s president in Japan, dressed in an astronaut suit declaring in a goofy video that the moon location will be a “giant leap for all of mankind” for his “fellow Earthlings.”

There’s a detailed cost breakdown –- development will cost $21.7 billion total, with about $.73 billion going toward rocket-based transport of building materials. A mock-up of the pizza joint features images of a playroom, training gym and plantation.

Link | The Moon Branch Project website [Flash, you can skip the opening monologue]

NASA has just released new images of the Apollo landing sites on the Moon (or Burbank sound studio, to all you conspiracy theorists):

The twists and turns of the last tracks left by humans on the moon crisscross the surface in this LRO image of the Apollo 17 site. In the thin lunar soil, the trails made by astronauts on foot can be easily distinguished from the dual tracks left by the lunar roving vehicle, or LRV. Also seen in this image are the descent stage of the Challenger lunar module and the LRV, parked to the east.

Link

French artist Laurent Laveder has shared a couple dozen beautiful images of the moon used as a prop. His other night- and sky-themed works include 3D starscapes, which can be found in his PixHeaven gallery.

Link, PixHeaven Gallery via Mighty Optical Illusions

Could the moon be 60 million years younger then scientists currently think? New research on moon rocks could lead to rethinking on how the moon was formed.

A new analysis conducted on lunar rocks brought back to Earth by the Apollo 16 astronauts has led researchers to believe that the moon may be 60 million years younger than previously thought. This would make the current prevailing theory about how the moon formed impossible. The new results date the moon at around 4.36 billion years old, which means that the moon formed around the same time as the oldest crusts on Earth (4.4 billion year old zircons from Australia.)

Link

This five-foot diameter mattress is from Korean designers Lily Suh and Zoono of i3lab. The image of the moon is by astrophotographer Chin Wei Loon. There’s also a glow-in-the-dark pillow to go with it. Link -via Laughing Squid

Celestial Buddies

Do you dream of snuggling up at night with a heavenly body? Well, now you can with the Celestial Buddies from the NeatoShop.  These fantastic plush toys are designed to look like the sun, earth, moon, and mars.

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more loveable Plush Toys.

Link

The idea, cooked up by astronomers Martin Jutzi and Erik Asphaug, of the University of California at Santa Cruz, started out as an attempt to explain why our moon has so asymmetrical a surface. The part that faces us is relatively smooth, with vast expanses of ancient lava forming flat, dark, low-lying plains that earlier astronomers mistook for oceans. But when space probes first circled the moon in the early 1960s, scientists learned that the far side is mostly covered with rugged mountains and craters.

Link

For nearly twenty years after Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon in July 1969, the Soviet Union categorically denied having a manned lunar program of its own. It wasn’t until the late 1980s that we began to learn just how close they came to beating the United States to the moon.

HEARING IS BELIEVING

Not too long after 9:00 PM on the evening of April 11, 1961, a United States government listening post off Alaska picked up the sound of human voices speaking in Russian. That wasn’t unusual; in the early 1960s, the Cold War was at its height, and the listening post had been set up for the purpose of intercepting Soviet communications.

But as the analysts studied the transmission, they realized that one of the voices was coming from space -low-Earth orbit to be exact- and the other voices were transmitting from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Soviet Kazakhstan, headquarters of the USSR’s space program. As the entire world would learn in a few hours, the 27-year-old cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin had just become the first human being to fly in space. As was typical with the Soviet space program, the launch had been kept a secret. The signals from space were probably the first inkling the United States had that it had been beaten in the space race once again.

SECOND PLACE

Gagarin had blasted off at 9:07 AM Moscow time on the morning of April 12th (Moscow was 12 hours ahead of Alaska). He made just one orbit around the Earth before landing back on Soviet soil at 10:55 AM. That’s not much of a space flight by modern standards, but in 1961 it stunned the world. Just as it had when it launched Sputnik, the world’s first artificial satellite, in October 1957, the Soviet Union had demonstrated that it, not the United States, was leading the way into space. The United States wouldn’t be able to send an American astronaut, John Glenn, into orbit until February 1962.

JFK’s QUERY

No one felt the sting of second place more than president John F. Kennedy. “Do we have a chance of beating the Soviets by putting a laboratory in space, or by a trip around the Moon, or by a rocket to land on the moon, or by a rocket to go to the moon and back with a man?” the president asked in a memo to his vice president, Lyndon Baines Johnson. “Is there any other space program which promises dramatic results in which we could win?”

JFK dispatched Johnson to NASA to get an answer. Wernher von Braun, head of rocket development, suggested that America had a chance of beating the Soviets in a flight around the Moon, but that it had an even bigger chance at being the first country to land a man on the Moon’s surface. JFK weighed the options, and on May 25, 1961, made his famous speech committing the United States to landing a man on the Moon by the end of the decade.

NO CONTEST?

On July 20, 1969, the United States won the race to the Moon when astronaut Neil A. Armstrong became the first human being to set foot on lunar soil. But had the Soviets contemplated trying to beat the United States to the Moon? For more than two decades after the Moon landing, the official answer was a definitive, categorical “Nyet!” The Soviets claimed they skipped the Moon race in favor of the more practical challenge of putting a space station into Earth’s orbit. And they succeeded- between 1971 and 1986, they launched seven different space stations into orbit.

The Soviets stuck to their we-didn’t-shoot-for-the-Moon story until August 18, 1989, when the government’s official newspaper, Izvestiya, admitted that the USSR had indeed tried to send a cosmonaut to the Moon, in what was one of the most closely guarded secret programs of the Cold War. They had actually come pretty close to succeeding: Were it not for one large technical challenge that proved insurmountable, the Soviet Union might well have won the race.

When the Soviets were planning their lunar program, they faced the same question NASA had faced: Did they want to go in one large rocket, or did they want to use several launches of smaller rockets to assemble a lunar spacecraft in Earth’s orbit before heading to the Moon? Launching everything aboard one rocket was a quicker option, and since beating America to the Moon was a high priority, that’s what the Soviets chose to do. They set to work developing a rocket big enough for the job, called the N-1.

DOWNSIZING

Soviet N-1 rocket

Using one rocket, no matter how big it is, severely limits the options on how to get to the moon and back, and because of this, the Soviets’ secret program ended up looking a lot like the Apollo program, which also used one rocket, the Saturn V. But because the N-1 was smaller than the Saturn V, the Soviet mission would be smaller in many respects. It would have less room for cargo, and only two cosmonauts would make the trip, not three as on the Apollo missions. And that meant that only one cosmonaut would get to walk on the Moon, instead of two.

* The Soviet plans called for the N-1 rocket to lift a command ship called the Lunniy Orbitalny Korabl (LOK) into Earth’s orbit. The command ship would then travel to the Moon and enter lunar orbit. An attached lunar lander, call the Lunniy Kabina (“Lunar Cabin,” or LK, for short), would then separate from the LOK and descend to the lunar surface with one of the cosmonauts aboard. The other cosmonaut had to remain on the LOK.

* After spending about 24 hours on the surface of the Moon, the cosmonaut would climb back into the LK, launch back into lunar orbit, and dock with the LOK. Once the cosmonaut was safety back aboard the LOK, the LK would be jettisoned, and the LOK would fire its rocket, putting the craft on a return course to Earth. Then, when the LOK arrived in Earth’s orbit, the crew compartment would split apart from the rest of the LOK and re-enter the atmosphere with the cosmonauts aboard, parachuting to a landing somewhere inside the Soviet Union. The rest of the LOK would burn up on re-entry.

A model of the Lunniy Orbitalny Korabl (LOK)

NOT QUITE APOLLO

For all its similarities with the Apollo program, the Soviet lunar program did have its differences.

* Would you want to land on the Moon all by yourself while wearing an unwieldy spacesuit that’s difficult to move around in? What if you fell down -who would help you up? The Soviets were so worried about this possibility that they attached a device to the spacesuit that looked like a hula hoop. If the lone cosmonaut did fall on his back while walking on the Moon, he could use the hula hoop to roll over on his knees and stand back up.

Lunniy Kabina (LK)

* The Soviets were also worried about the LK becoming so damaged during landing that it would be unable to blast off from the Moon -landing a man on the Moon just to watch him die there would have been a human tragedy, not to mention a public relations disaster. The Soviets made plans to send a second LK to the Moon in advance of the mission …just in case.

* The second LK would have been useless if the cosmonaut landed too far away from it or couldn’t find it after landing on the Moon, so the Soviets also planned to send an unmanned, remote controlled rover to the Moon in advance of the manned landing. Its job would be to select landing sites for both the primary LK and the unmanned backup, and then serve as a landing beacon for both LKs. The rover would also be equipped with oxygen tanks and a platform for the cosmonaut to stand on, to enable it to ferry the cosmonaut to the backup LK if necessary.

TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE

So why didn’t the Soviets make it to the Moon? Part of the problem was that the Soviet leadership didn’t take the challenge seriously until it was too late to catch up with the Americans. Premiere Nikita Khrushchev endorsed the idea of a lunar program in 1962, but it wasn’t until 1964, more than three years after JFK put NASA on a course toward the Moon, that the Soviet leadership started committing resources to the project.

By then it probably would have been too late for them to catch up with the United States even under the best of circumstances, and the Soviets made the situation worse by designing the giant N-1 rocket so that it used 30 smaller rocket motors instead of fewer, more powerful motors. (NASA’s Saturn V used five rocket motors -that’s how it got its name.) Getting 30 rocket motors to work together in perfect unison without shaking each other apart is next to impossible, and the Soviets never did pull it off. The N-1 was only test launched four times -twice before Neil Armstrong landed on the Moon and twice afterward. All four tests ended in failure; the rockets either exploded or malfunctioned and had to be destroyed by Soviet ground control.

SHHH!

Given the open nature of the Apollo program and subsequent NASA missions, it’s difficult to absorb just how covert the Soviet Union’s manned lunar program was. Launches took place in complete secrecy, although the United States did have an inkling that a Soviet lunar program was underway. The N-1 rockets were nearly 40 stories tall, and once they were rolled out onto the launch pads, it wasn’t hard for American spy satellites to find them or for the CIA to guess what rockets that big were designed for.

On a few occasions, the U.S. government was even spooked into thinking they were about to lose the race to the Moon. In September 1968, for example, the U.S. detected the launch of a rocket from Baikonur and traced its course all the way to the Moon. They even detected the sound of a human voice in a radio signal transmitted from the spacecraft. Was this another Yuri Gagarin moment? This time, NASA got lucky -the voice was only a recording designed to test the spacecraft’s radio equipment.

NASA was so concerned about losing the space race that it sped up the pace of its operations. The Apollo 8 mission (December-21-27, 1968), only the second manned mission of the Apollo program, was originally intended to test equipment in Earth’s orbit. But the CIA was so convinced the the USSR was about to send cosmonauts on a flight around the Moon, NASA changed it to a circumlunar mission to keep the Soviets from beating them to the punch. Less than a year later, the Soviets -along with the rest of the world- watched the United States win the race.

NOW WHAT?

With that, the Soviet lunar program lost much of its purpose. For a time, the Soviets considered expanding the program to include a base on the Moon -if they couldn’t get there first, they reasoned, they could still get there best. But the lunar program was canceled in 1974 as the Soviet Union shifted its emphasis to building space stations.

In the early 1970s, NASA began work on a reusable space shuttle. When informed that the United States’ shuttle would be able to carry military cargo over the Soviet Union, Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev ordered up a space shuttle of his own. “We are not country bumpkins here!” he is said to have shouted. The first American space shuttle, the Columbia, flew on April 12, 1981; the first Soviet shuttle, named the Buran, or “Snowstorm,” flew on November 15, 1988. The Buran only made a single, unmanned flight before the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 caused the program to be canceled.

Today the rivalry between the United States and Russian space programs is over, perhaps for good, as they work together with other countries in the International Space Station.

This NASA photo shows astronauts from the US, Russia, Japan, Canada, and Belgium together aboard the International Space Station (ISS)

CABIN FEVER

Not much remains of the Soviet manned lunar program more than 35 years after it was canceled. Remember, it wasn’t just canceled; it was officially, categorically denied until the late 1980s, and by then nearly everything that could be recycled or reused by the Soviet space program had long since disappeared. Some parts that couldn’t be used for anything else were made into storage sheds, airplane hangars, and even bandstands and children’s playgrounds in and around the Baikonur Cosmodrome. Four of the LKs did survive, however. If you ever make it to France, you can see one of them on display at EuroDisney.

____________________________

The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Unsinkable Bathroom Reader.

The Bathroom Readers’ Institute has sailed the seas of science, history, pop culture, humor, and more to bring you Uncle John’s Unsinkable Bathroom Reader. Our all-new 21st edition is overflowing with over 500 pages of material that is sure to keep you fully absorbed.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute has published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts. Check out their website here: Bathroom Reader Institute.

Mind you, we’re not talking about potential geysers or subsurface lakes here; the amount of water we’re seeing here means you’d need to grind up a couple of cubic meters of this glass just to get enough water to drink with lunch. So what’s the big deal?

The big deal is that now we’re even less certain how the Moon formed. The presence of water in subsurface lunar rocks messes with the Giant Impact Hypothesis, the leading theory on the topic to date. Read more at Bad Astronomy.

Link | Image: Sunday Mercury

A lot of people are trying to be more green these days by installing solar panels on the roofs of their homes and businesses. However the ultimate solar panel installation may be on the moon.

Shimizu Corporation construction firm’s research branch, CSP, unveiled a long-term planning project to install a belt of photovoltaic panels across the surface of the Moon. Power gathered from the 13,000 terawatts of continuous solar energy the Moon’s surface receives daily would be beamed back to an Earth-based receiving station via microwave or laser transmission, where it would then be used to power public offices, hospitals and schools across the globe.

Link

How to you kill two birds with one stone? We haven’t been back to the moon since the Apollo missions and we have a looming energy crisis. Former NASA astronaut Harrison Schmitt has a big plan to solve both those issues.

 Former astronaut, Apollo moonwalker, geologist and former Senator Harrison Schmitt has a modest plan to solve the world’s energy problems. All we need is $15 billion over 15 years and some fusion reactors that have yet to be invented.

Link

Sir John Frederick William Herschel

The following is an article from Uncle John’s Endlessly Engrossing Bathroom Reader.

No, not the one about the Hollywood studio and all that -the other one.

A WALK ON THE MOON

On August 25, 1835, the first of a series of front-page article was published in the Sun, a two-year-old newspaper in New York City. The subject was Sir John Frederick William Herschel, one of the most respected scientists of his day, especially in the field of astronomy. He’d already identified and named seven moons of Saturn and four of Uranus, and had received numerous awards for his work, including a British knighthood. The information for the article came from the Edinburgh Journal of Science and a Dr. Andrew Grant, who had recently accompanied Dr. Herschel to South Africa, where they were mapping the skies of the Southern Hemisphere. To do the job properly, Herschel had built a massive telescope -the lens was 24 feet in diameter- that operated “on an entirely new principle.” It was all very scientific and complicated.

The first article didn’t reveal much, but over the next six days readers received some amazing news. In the course of his investigations with the new device, Hershel had aimed his new telescope at the moon. The scope was so powerful that looking through it was almost like standing on the lunar surface, enabling Herschel to make an astonishing discovery: The moon was teeming with life. And not just plants -there were animals running all over the place.

EXPERTS AGREE

Extraterrestrial life was a hot topics in the early 1800s. Telescopes were getting larger, and astronomers were discovering more and more stars, moons, planets, comets, nebulae, etc. Along with these discoveries some claims -sometimes from respected astronomers- that it was only a matter of time before life was discovered on other planets. One especially popular book at the time was Christian Philosopher, or the Connexion of Science and Philosophy with Religion, by Scottish scientist and minister Thomas Dick, first published in 1823. In it, Dock estimated (somehow) that there were roughly 21 trillion inhabitants in our solar system -4 million of whom lived on the moon!

MOON BATS

Over the six days, the Sun’s readers learned even more new information about the moon. A few examples: The lunar surface is covered in forests, lakes, rivers, and seas, inhabited by spherical creatures that rolled across the beautiful beaches, blue unicorns that wander the mountains, and two-legged beavers that live in huts and use fire. But there was one even more outlandish claim: There are intelligent humanoids on the moon -about four feet tall, largely covered in hair, with faces that are “a slight improvement upon that of a large orangutan.” And they have wings. They spend their time flying around, eating fruit, bathing, and talking with each other. Herschel gave them the scientific name Vespertilio-homo, or “man-bat,” and said they were actually civilized.

They seemed eminently happy, and even polite, for we saw, in many instances, individuals sitting nearest these piles of fruit select the largest and brightest specimens, and throw them archwise across the circle to some opposite friend or associate who extracted the nutriment from those scattered around him, and which were frequently not a few.

The articles caused a sensation. Newspapers across America reprinted them without raising any questions (the New York Times called the information they contained “probable and possible”), and the Sun instantly became the best-selling newspaper in the country. To further cash in on the “moon fever” they had started, the Sun even reprinted the story in pamphlet form, along with sketches of the newly-discovered moon species, and sold thousands of them, too.

BACK TO EARTH

Over the next few weeks, the story spread to Europe, where it enjoyed the same success it had in America. But doubts about the story were growing, too. Eventually it got to South Africa… and to Sir John Herschel. He, of course, denied the claims immediately. And it turned out the Edinburgh Journal of Science had eased to exist years earlier and there was no such person as Dr. Andrew Grant. “The Great Moon Hoax,” as it became known, was over.

The truth of the hoax’s origin remains a mystery. Most accounts say the story was written by the Sun’s Cambridge-educated reporter Richard Adams Locke, and that he did it as a satire to mock the gullible public and “scientists” like Thomas Dick, who made wild claims based on nothing but speculation. (Locke never publicly admitted to writing the articles, although there are some credible accounts of him later confessing to their authorship in private.)

Herschel later said he thought the hoax was hilarious… at first. But he grew annoyed at having to answer questions about the “moon people,” which continued for years afterward. The Sun never issued a retraction for the story, and never admitted that it was a hoax. By 1836 the Sun had a circulation of 20,000-and was the largest newspaper in the world.

EPILOGUE

* Richard Adams Locke left the Sun in August 1836 and started his own paper, The New Era. There he published another hoax, “The Lost Manuscript of Mungo Park,” the purported diaries of a famed Scottish adventurer in Africa. It failed to catch the public’s imagination, as too many people knew that Locke was the author.

* Thomas Dick, who was probably overjoyed about the articles when he first heard of them, was much less happy when he found out they were hoaxes, saying that “such attempts to deceive are violations of the laws of the Creator.”

* An American preacher who had heard about the story took up a collection in the hopes of sending Bibles to the man-bats on the moon. (Just how he proposed to do that is unknown.)

* In April 1844, the Sun published the story of a European aerialist named Monck Mason, who had just completed the first crossing of the Atlantic Ocean in a hot-air balloon …in three days. The “Balloon Hoax” is the second-most famous of the Sun’s hoax stories -and it was written by Edgar Allan Poe.

__________

The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Endlessly Engrossing Bathroom Reader.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.

If you like Neatorama, you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books – go ahead and check ‘em out!

I knew this, but only because I recall the approximate the number of miles to the moon, and the circumference of the earth. Those near my age might also remember that a fast rocket ship takes three days to get to the moon. -via reddit

A collision eons ago between the earth and another celestial body throw vaporized rock into the atmosphere, some of which eventually became the moon. If this is true, you’d think that the earth and the moon would share the same basic materials, but there is more iron on the moon and more magnesium on earth.

Now researchers have an answer, and it’s completely awesome. Magma rain would resolve the mystery, as rising rock vapor would see its magnesium oxide start to condense into droplets and fall back onto the planet’s surface. The iron oxide inside the rock vapor wouldn’t have condensed as easily, meaning far more of it got mixed into the disc that became the Moon.

Which evokes some interesting mental pictures resembling heavy metal album covers. Link -via Geekosystem

(Image credit: Fahad Sulehria)

In case you couldn’t stay up all night and watch it, or you are someplace where it wasn’t visible, here is the video of last night’s lunar eclipse. Four hours of moonlight are compressed into two minutes. The video was captured over Gainesville, Florida by professor William Castleman. -via The Daily What

The entire 72 minutes of the total lunar eclipse will be visible from all of North and South America, the northern and western part of Europe, and a small part of northeast Asia including Korea and much of Japan. Totality will also be visible in its entirety from the North Island of New Zealand and Hawaii.

In all, an estimated 1.5 billion people will have an opportunity to enjoy the best part of this lunar show.

In other parts of the world, either only the partial stages of the eclipse will be visible or the eclipse will occur when it’s daytime and the moon is not above their local horizon.

The moon might take on some odd colors during the eclipse. This is the first lunar eclipse during the winter solstice in almost 500 years. Link -via reddit

Armstrong’s longest, boldest walk took him about as far as Joe DiMaggio used to jog every inning — from home plate to about mid-center field. That’s like walking about a block from your hotel’s front door. Who knew?

Apollo 11 commander Neil Armstrong doesn’t do many interviews, so it was a surprise when he wrote to Krulwich to respond.

It is true that we were cautious in our planning.   There were many uncertainties about how well our Lunar module systems and our Pressure suit and backpack would match the engineering predictions in the hostile lunar environment.   We were operating in a near perfect vacuum with the temperature well above 200 degrees Fahrenheit with the local gravity only one sixth that of Earth.  That combination cannot be duplicated here on Earth, but we tried as best we could to test our equipment for those conditions.

There’s a lot more you can read at NPR. Link -Thanks, Marilyn Terrell!

The Apollo 11 astronauts left a variety of items on the moon.  In addition to the flag, the plaque, and the silicon disk with goodwill statements, they left the item shown above.  It is a small replica of an olive branch, described as “less than half a foot in length,” a traditional symbol of peace.   The gesture was intended to serve as “a wish for peace for all mankind.”

Photo:  Great Images in NASA, via Fresh Photons.

The blogger behind English Russia compiled high-resolution photos of displays inside the Moscow Aviation Institute. These include images of a proposed manned lunar lander.

Link via Fanboy | Photo: JRussus

Previously: Russians Tried to Beat Apollo 11 in the Race to the Moon by Crash Landing a Spacecraft

“We made several tests and noticed that the fermentation was more vigorous, more active,” explained Roger Caulier, the owner of Brewery Caulier, which began in the 1930s when his grandfather started selling homemade beer from a handcart.

“The end product was completely different, stronger, with a taste lasting longer in the mouth,” he said.

The full moon speeds up the fermentation process, shortening it to five days from seven, which adds extra punch to the beer without making it harsh, according to connoisseurs.

The resulting beer is 10% alcohol, which is not unusual in Belgium. Link

(Image credit: Reuters/Thierry Roge)

One of my favorite brain-benders is the Ponzo Illusion. You’ve seen it: the simplest case is with two short horizontal lines, one above the other, between two slanting but near-vertical lines. The upper line looks longer than the lower line, even though they’re the same length.

The illusion works because our brains are a bit wonky. The slanted lines make us think that anything near the top is farther away; the lines force our brain to think those lines are parallel but receding in the distance (like railroad tracks). The two horizontal lines are physically the same length, but our brain thinks the upper one is farther away. If it’s farther away, then duh, our brain says to itself, it must be bigger than the lower one. So we perceive it that way.

See examples of how this works at Bad Astronomy Blog. Link

Let’s see if you get the humor in this sweet cartoon of Why The Moon Hates The Beach by Mark Heath.

More T-Shirts by Mark over at the NeatoShop | Mark’s official website | Gallery at American Scientist

If you love science cartoons, you’ll love Mark Heath’s No Brow Cartoons! Mark, who also drew the nationally syndicated Spot the Frog comic strip till 2008, is kind enough to allow us to adapt his awesome cartoons into T-shirt designs available from the NeatoShop: Link

Links: Mark’s official website | No Brow Cartoons gallery at American Scientist

The crater shown was created in 1970 by the Apollo 13 moon mission. Wait -you remember Apollo 13 {wiki}, don’t you? That’s the one where Tom Hanks James Lovell and his crew didn’t get to land because everything went wrong! Still, they ejected the third stage of the Saturn V rocket and sent it toward the moon’s surface. Forty years later, this is considered a fairly new crater. The picture was taken just last year. Read all about it at Bad Astronomy Blog. Link

(image credit: NASA, NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University)

The Moon’s remarkable luminosity sprung from its proximity–about 50,000 km closer to Earth than other full Moons of the year. This can happen because the Moon’s orbit is not a circle but an ellipse: diagram. Last night, the Moon was on the near side of the ellipse–a place astronomers call “perigee”–making it a big, bright perigee Moon.

The “Wolf Moon” designation applied to January full moons comes from Native American tradition, according to the Farmers’ Almanac.  If you missed last night’s maximum, it will still be impressive tonight.  Those experiencing cloudy weather can watch the movie “Moonstruck” instead.

Link.

Only a very small portion of the Moon’s southern limb will be in the Earth’s umbral shadow, but there will be a noticeable darkening visible over the Moon’s face at the point of greatest eclipse. Need more? Then know this eclipse is the one of four lunar eclipses in a short-lived series. The lunar year series repeats after 12 lunations or 354 days. Afterwards it will begin shifting back about 10 days in sequential years. Because of the date change, the Earth’s shadow will be about 11 degrees west in sequential events.

For the eclipse, the duration of the partial phase will last within two seconds of a hour long, while the penumbral duration from beginning to end will run about four hours and eleven minutes. Penumbral contact will begin at 17:17:08 UT and umbral contact at 18:52:43 UT. The moment of greatest depth of shadow will occur at 19:22:39 UT, 31 December 2009.

Link -via Geeks Are Sexy

(image credit: Kostian Iftica)

Did you see the ring around the moon last night? If you did and wondered what caused it, Yahoo! Buzz Log has the answer:

Though it looked ominous, the shiny ring around the moon last night was actually a rather common weather phenomenon. According to various weather-related blogs across the Buzz, this ring around the moon occurs when thin cirrus clouds, which contain ice crystals, refract the moonlight. A blog from the Goddard Space Flight Center explains that "the shape of the ice crystals results in a focusing of the light into a ring. Since the ice crystals typically have the same shape, namely a hexagonal shape, the Moon ring is always the same size."

Link

The History Bluff (motto: "Making a mess of history") brings us another headscratcher with the sad news that the first monkey to ever walk on the moon has passed away.

On June 3, 1981 Harlan the Monkey became the first primate to ever walk on the moon. Harlan died on November 18, 2009 of an apparent Tang overdose.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by geezyreezy.

"The discovery opens a new chapter in our understanding of the moon," the space agency said in a written statement shortly after the briefing began.

Michael Wargo, chief lunar scientist at NASA headquarters in Washington, said the latest discovery also could unlock the mysteries of the solar system.

He listed several options as sources for the water, including solar winds, comets, giant molecular clouds or even the moon itself through some kind of internal activity. The Earth also may have a role, Wargo said.

"If the water that was formed or deposited is billions of years old, these polar cold traps could hold a key to the history and evolution of the solar system, much as an ice core sample taken on Earth reveals ancient data," NASA said in its statement.

Coicidence? I smell a conspiracy. Where’s my tin foil hat? Next stop: microbes on Mars! Link

The hole measures 65 metres across, and based on images taken at a variety of sun angles, the hole is thought to extend down at least 80 metres. It sits in the middle of a rille, suggesting the hole leads into a lava tube as wide as 370 metres across… Since the tubes may be hundreds of metres wide, they could provide plenty of space for an underground lunar outpost. The tubes’ ceilings could protect astronauts from space radiation, meteoroid impacts and wild temperature fluctuations…

This is reminiscent of the “doorway” found on Mars several years ago, but this discovery seems to be more clearly defined.  More details at New Scientist, via NAACAL.

Nasa officials plan to go ahead with the Ares 1-X test flight even as Barack Obama’s administration considers plans to shelve the Constellation programme through lack of funding.

A detailed review of Nasa’s future programmes recently delivered to the White House raised concerns that the space agency does not have deep enough pockets to fulfil its vision for a return to the moon. The review said the agency may have to abandon the Ares rockets and switch to a cheaper design. (Photo: NASA).

Here’s a rendering of an Ares launch.

YouTube Link

Story Link

“The Deep Impact observations of the Moon not only unequivocally confirm the presence of [water/hydroxyl] on the lunar surface, but also reveal that the entire lunar surface is hydrated during at least some portion of the lunar day,” the authors wrote in their study.

The findings of all three spacecraft “provide unambiguous evidence for the presence of hydroxyl or water,” said Paul Lucey of the University of Hawaii in an opinion essay accompanying the three studies. Lucey was not involved in any of the missions.

The new data “prompt a critical reexamination of the notion that the moon is dry. It is not,” Lucey wrote.

The amount of water on the moon is miniscule by Earth standards, with one ton of lunar surface holding about 32 ounces. Link -via Digg

Astronomers from Japan and Northern Ireland, presenting their findings today at the European Planetary Science Congress, used observations of Comet Kushida-Muramatsu—from when it was discovered in 1993 and when it returned in 2001—to calculate the comet’s path over the previous century. They determined that the comet became a temporary moon when it entered Jupiter’s neighborhood in 1949. It made two full, if irregular, orbits around the planet, and then continued its travels into the inner solar system in 1962.

The researchers also predict that Comet 111P/Helin-Roman-Crockett, which circled Jupiter between 1967 and 1985, will again become a temporary moon and complete six loops around the planet between 2068 and 2086.

“The results of our study suggests that impacts on Jupiter and temporary satellite capture events may happen more frequently than we previously expected,” David Asher of Northern Ireland’s Armagh Observatory told the AFP.

Link

Photo: NASA

Vincent Miu took Runner-Up in the 2009 Astronomy Photographer of the Year contest, Earth & Space category, with this entry.

I imagine it’s a long exposure shot grafted onto a single shot, but I’m not sure.  Anyone know how he achieved this beautiful result?

Link | Link to the Grand Winner

Link via Popular Science

This start-up proposes to use robots to carve the lunar surface dust into patterns that could serve as advertisements. I’m skeptical due to the sheer scale of the task — the number of robots necessary over a very long period of time. Still, people said that we’d never have bacon flavored vodka, but scientists and engineers overcame the obstacles. Anyway, we know from an episode of The Tick that it can be done.

Link via Popular Science

“Not only do these images reveal the great accomplishments of Apollo, they also show us that lunar exploration continues,” said LRO project scientist Richard Vondrak of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. “They demonstrate how LRO will be used to identify the best destinations for the next journeys to the moon.”

NASA officials say the next round of photographs, to be taken during the final mapping orbit, will have even greater resolution. Link -via Bad Astronomy Blog, where these pictures caused great excitement.

(image credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/Arizona State University)

A rock named Blue Genesis was brought back from the moon by Apollo 16, the final moon mission, in 1972. Moon rocks remain rare and precious for that a single reason – because we never went back for more.

The astronauts brought it and 200 pounds of other rocks back to Earth as the bounty from Apollo 16. At the Lunar Receiving Laboratory in Houston, scientists ascertained that Blue Genesis, as it was once called, weighed 12 pounds, and they cut it to pieces to send out for study. Geologists estimate that it could be 4.23 billion years old.

Since 1981, a sliver of that rock has resided like a wedge of old cheese — a light gray speckled filling inside a dark rind — at the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by healthylivinggal83.

Craig Nelson offers ten lesser-known facts about the first human moon landing:

6. The “one small step for man” wasn’t actually that small. Armstrong set the ship down so gently that its shock absorbers didn’t compress. He had to hop 3.5 feet from the Eagle’s ladder to the surface.

7. When Buzz Aldrin joined Armstrong on the surface, he had to make sure not to lock the Eagle’s door because there was no outer handle.

8. The toughest moonwalk task? Planting the flag. NASA’s studies suggested that the lunar soil was soft, but Armstrong and Aldrin found the surface to be a thin wisp of dust over hard rock. They managed to drive the flagpole a few inches into the ground and film it for broadcast, and then took care not to accidentally knock it over.

Link

Sir Bernard Lovell, the astronomer, was among the team listening to transmissions coming from the area of space and began tracking the unmanned Soviet spacecraft Luna 15, which was trying to collect samples of lunar soil and rock and then return to Earth before the US mission.

The recordings from Jodrell’s Lovell radio telescope, which were hidden in archives until researchers found them, show the Russian craft orbited the Moon and crash-landed onto its surface at 15:50 on July 21 – just a few hours before the Americans lifted off. [...]

People in Jodrell’s control room can then be heard shouting "it’s landing" and "it’s going down much too fast" as they track Luna 15′s final moments before it crashes.

A voice is later heard saying: "I say, this has really been drama of the highest order."

Link – via 80beats

The liftoff from the moon was intrinsically a tense time . The ascent stage simply had to work. The engines had to fire, propelling us upward, leaving the descent stage of the LM still sitting on the moon. We had no margin for error, no second chances, no rescue plans if the liftoff failed. There would be no way for Mike up in Columbia to retrieve us. We had no provision for another team to race from Earth to pick us up if the Eagle did not soar. Nor did we have food, water, or oxygen for more than a few hours.

Link -via Digg

"Reach for the moon" is easier said than done, so when you hear someone utter this oft-overused phrase, kindly point them out to this ladder by Hong Kong Designer Mike Mak. The "Moon Reach Ladder" inspired by , the Chinese character for moon.

Link (under projects > Moon reach ladder) – via CreativeRoots

We normally associate space itself as being littered with the detritus of our nascent attempts at interstellar travel.  The moon, however, is chock full of the remains of our various attempts to explore it.  So, what exactly is up there?  Moreover, does any of the stuff on the moon still work or is it just one giant cosmic trash can?

If HG Wells and others were correct and there were civilizations on the moon then they would have expelled a communal gasp of horror in 1959 when the first piece of man made technology hit the moon dust. Looking now like some steam punk version of what we regularly send spinning in to space, Luna 2 was launched by the Soviets when the Cold War was at its height. The collision with the moon at least proved on thing – that our nearest neighbor in space has no appreciable magnetic field. To add insult to injury, half an hour after Luna 2 hit the moon, so did the third stage of its rocket.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by taliesyn30.