Before Apollo 17 left the orbit of the Moon for Earth, Gene Cernan sketched unusual glows & moon beams appearing on the lunar horizon before sunrise. NASA scientists said it was similar to a sunrise on Earth, but with no atmosphere to scatter the light they were baffled as to what it could be. Dust seemed the most plausible answer, but the next question is what would cause dust to get that high off the surface of the Moon. The Surveyor spacecraft also captured eerie glows on the horizon. Several years passed without having an immediate scientific explanation and some conspiracy theorists filled in the gap saying it was a domed lunar base to UFOs to a government cover-up. Lost NASA data from the lunar Dust Detector Experiment left by the Apollo missions were found from back-up files from the principle investigator of the DDE as well as from data from the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer satellite orbiting the Moon suggested that dust was not only being kicked up high off the lunar surface from meteors & other impacts/lunar landings and taking many years to settle, but a theory was Moon dust particles on the daytime side of the moon can build a positive charge when radiation from the sun kicks electrons out of atoms of dust. But on the side of the moon thats dark, dust particles can gain a negative charge when they are bombarded with electrons from the solar wind. Where the dark and light sides meet, electric forces could levitate this charged dust high off the lunar surface. Reflections from dust could also answer the still unexplained Transient Lunar Phenomena, strange fluorescent glows on the lunar surface that have been recorded seen since the 6th century as well as by the Apollo astronauts during the trip to the Moon. NASA investigators still believe dust is the most plausible answer, but not with 100% certainty which is where the conspiracy theories come in.
Posted on: Fri, 24 Oct 2014 16:39:09 +0000