Related papers: Water on The Moon, I. Historical Overview
The Moon appears bright in the sky as a source of energetic neutral atoms (ENAs). These ENAs have recently been imaged over a broad energy range both from near the lunar surface, by India's Chandrayaan-1 mission (CH-1), and from a much more…
Laser ranging measurements during the total lunar eclipse on 2010 December 21 verify previously suspected thermal lensing in the retroreflectors left on the lunar surface by the Apollo astronauts. Signal levels during the eclipse far…
We examine how water is produced globally over the lunar surface as it orbits in/out of the magnetotail. Due to the interaction of the solar wind (SW) with Earth's magnetic field, upstream the magnetic field is compressed down to ~10 Earth…
Mars' surface bears the imprint of valley networks formed billions of years ago and their relicts can still be observed today. However, whether these networks were formed by groundwater sapping, ice melt, or fluvial runoff has been…
Time-limited space missions may miss rare occurrences of very dense clouds of lunar dust. At the same time, the information provided by the Earth-based monitoring of the Moon during at least the last three centuries still remains unused. In…
The angular momentum of the Earth-Moon system was initially dominated by Earth's rotation with a short solar day of around 5 hours duration. Since then, Earth gradually transferred angular momentum through tidal friction to the orbit of the…
What was the nature of the Late Hesperian climate? Warm and wet or cold and dry? Formulated this way the question leads to an apparent paradox since both options seem implausible. A warm and wet climate would have produced extensive fluvial…
Events following the giant impact formation of the Moon are thought to have led to volatile depletion and concurrent mass-dependent fractionation of the isotopes of moderately volatile elements (MVE). The detailed processes and conditions…
Aims. 'Earthshine' is the dim light seen on the otherwise dark side of the Moon, particularly when it is close to new. 'Earthlight', or reflected sunlight from the Earth, is the source of Earthshine. Using B and V band CCD images of both…
Similarities in the non-mass dependent isotopic composition of refractory elements with the bulk silicate Earth suggest that both the Earth and the Moon formed from the same material reservoir. On the other hand, the Moon's volatile…
Venus's past climate evolution is uncertain. General circulation model simulations permit a habitable climate as late as ~0.7 Ga, and there is suggestive-albeit inconclusive-evidence for previous liquid water from surface geomorphology and…
The observed temporary dark streaks on some dune slopes on Mars may be due to thin sheets of water (or some other liquid) trickling downhill. This note corrects conceptual errors in a previous paper (M\"{o}hlmann and Kereszturi 2010, Icarus…
The Giant Impact is currently accepted as the leading theory for the formation of Earth's Moon. Successful scenarios for lunar origin should be able to explain the chemical composition of the Moon (volatile content and stable isotope…
The Earth's albedo is a fundamental climate parameter for understanding the radiation budget of the atmosphere. It has been traditionally measured from space platforms, but also from the ground for sixteen years from Big Bear Solar…
This chapter presents a comprehensive overview of the abundances and distribution of S, and the processes that control the behavior of S on the Earth's Moon and on Mercury. The two planetary bodies share notable similarities, such as…
Magic squares have been well explored here on Earth [1], but there appears to have been little-to-no examination of $\textit{lunar}$ magic squares. Some kinds of magic squares exist on the moon (i.e. under lunar arithmetic) but not on Earth…
The measured neutron flux from the Moons south polar region shows evidence of locally enhanced hydrogen concentrations, likely in the form of water ice, within most permanently shadowed regions (PSR), poleward of 77 deg S latitude. Results…
Context - Around the year 2000, Triton's south pole experienced an extreme summer solstice that occurs every about 650 years, when the subsolar latitude reached about 50{\deg}. Bracketing this epoch, a few occultations probed Triton's…
This is a historian's view of how modern astronomy data can be used to discuss the shifting historical worldview of Late Antiquity. In this article an attemp is made to construct an approximate model of how the cycles of astronomical…
Mars is believed to have had a substantial atmosphere in the past. Atmospheric loss led to depressurization and cooling, and is thought to be the primary driving force responsible for the loss of liquid water from its surface. Recently,…