Dust storms on moon

[Spinzonner]

being followed by a moon shadow (well, actually the opposite)

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2005/07dec_moonstorms.htm?list802423

[Call me Deacon Blues]

1. Now that's just cool as hell!

Sorry Republicans -- that's science -- you're not allowed to participate. Go back to reading your bible.

[Ian David]

2. Wow, we've proved we actually landed on The Moon! Take that, Art Bell!

December 7, 2005: Every lunar morning, when the sun first peeks over the dusty soil of the moon after two weeks of frigid lunar night, a strange storm stirs the surface.

The next time you see the moon, trace your finger along the terminator, the dividing line between lunar night and day. That's where the storm is. It's a long and skinny dust storm, stretching all the way from the north pole to the south pole, swirling across the surface, following the terminator as sunrise ceaselessly sweeps around the moon.

Never heard of it? Few have. But scientists are increasingly confident that the storm is real.

The evidence comes from an old Apollo experiment called LEAM, short for Lunar Ejecta and Meteorites. "Apollo 17 astronauts installed LEAM on the moon in 1972," explains Timothy Stubbs of the Solar System Exploration Division at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "It was designed to look for dust kicked up by small meteoroids hitting the moon's surface."

Right: The box in the foreground is the Lunar Ejecta and Meteorites Experiment (LEAM).
http://ares.jsc.nasa.gov/HumanExplore/Exploration/EXLibrary/docs/ApolloCat/Part1/LEAM.htm

<snip>

What could cause this? Stubbs has an idea: "The dayside of the moon is positively charged; the nightside is negatively charged." At the interface between night and day, he explains, "electrostatically charged dust would be pushed across the terminator sideways," by horizontal electric fields. (Learn more: "Moon Fountains." )




t's even possible that these storms have been spotted from Earth: For centuries, there have been reports of strange glowing lights on the moon, known as "lunar transient phenomena" or LTPs. Some LTPs have been observed as momentary flashes--now generally accepted to be visible evidence of meteoroids impacting the lunar surface. But others have appeared as amorphous reddish or whitish glows or even as dusky hazy regions that change shape or disappear over seconds or minutes. Early explanations, never satisfactory, ranged from volcanic gases to observers' overactive imaginations (including visiting extraterrestrials).

Now a new scientific explanation is gaining traction. "It may be that LTPs are caused by sunlight reflecting off rising plumes of electrostatically lofted lunar dust," Olhoeft suggests.

More:
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2005/07dec_moonstorms.htm?list802423