Water on the Moon

NASA has confirmed that there is water on the moon. The article includes information about how that water may have gotten there:

"There are potentially two types of water on the moon: that brought from outside sources, such as water-bearing comets striking the surface, or that that originates on the moon."

The first, it's believed, is how Earth got all its water. The second I'd never heard of.

"This second, endogenic, source is thought to possibly come from the interaction of the solar wind with moon rocks and soils.

The rocks and regolith that make up the lunar surface are about 45 percent oxygen (combined with other elements as mostly silicate minerals). The solar wind — the constant stream of charged particles emitted by the sun — are mostly protons, or positively charged hydrogen atoms.

If the charged hydrogens, which are traveling at one-third the speed of light, hit the lunar surface with enough force, they break apart oxygen bonds in soil materials, Taylor, the M3 team member suspects. Where free oxygen and hydrogen exist, there is a high chance that trace amounts of water will form."

So a sole proton can be thought of as a "positively charged hydrogen atom." Did not know that, but it makes sense. Hydrogen atoms, the smallest atoms in the element world, are made up of just one proton and one electron. That's it. No neutron.* So a sole proton can by thought of as a hydrogen atom that has lost its electron - it's negatively charged particle - and can therefore be thought of as a positively charged hydrogen atom. Huh. My atomic science lesson for the day.

So. We've got hydrogen atoms slamming into the lunar surface, which is 45% oxygen. That oxygen is bonded to other things in the rock and regolith, but the hydrogen atoms smash those bonds, and you have free oxygen. More hydrogen atoms are constantly arriving in the solar wind, and they meet up with free oxygen - H meets O - and you're bound to get H2O.

Fascinating.

* Don't you hate exceptions to the rule? There are actually three types - isotopes - of hydrogen. The most abundant - 99.98% of all hydrogen - has no neutrons. The other two types have one and two respectively. More here.

Hubble Finds a Mystery Object in Space

Just appeared there one day.

Astronomy Hobbyist Makes Mysterious Find

And her name is Hanny van Arkel!

Hanny van Arkel was poring over photos of galaxies on the Internet last August when she stumbled across a strange object in the night sky: a bright, gaseous mass with a gaping hole in its middle.

"It looked a bit like an irregular galaxy, but I wasn't sure what it was," Van Arkel told CNN. So she posted a query on the Web site of the Galaxy Zoo project, which encourages members of the public to join in astronomy research online.

Van Arkel is a 25-year-old schoolteacher in Heerlen, The Netherlands, not an astrophysicist.

The Hubble team is going to look at it, even.

The name of the strange mass: Hanny's Voorwerp. God, you've got to love that. It means "Hanny's Object."

Hanny van Arkel and out.

Image is the original that Hanny posted her query about.

Google Starry Night Gadget

Too, too cool. You can get a view of the sky from anywhere in the world - with the constellations pointed out.








Bill Hartmann of the Planetary Science Institute

One of the authors of the Giant Impact Theory of the origin of our lovely moon has a humble little Web site. He has paintings for sale.







Bad Astronomy On the Photo of Mercury

Cool stuff from an astronomy freak.

Do you see that circular feature to the upper right, slightly lighter in color than the surrounding plains? That’s Caloris Basin, the Basin of Heat. It’s called that because when Mercury reaches perihelion, that spot is close to being aimed right at the Sun. It’s one of the worsts spot on Mercury to live, if you’re considering a winter home there. Caloris Basin (formed in some ancient and very large impact) is over 1300 kilometers across — roughly as big as Texas. The mountains ringing it are 2 km high.

Here's a closeup.