RARE and MYSTERIOUS Moon Phenomena

About a thousand years ago, on June 18, 1178, a group of a dozen monks were walking along a hillside near Canterbury, England. It was just after sunset and the moon overhead was in an early waxing crescent stage, something similar to this. As they walked along the hillside, one of the monks witnessed something strange occurring on the moon. All the monks looked up and saw the upper part of the horn, right around this area, split in two as a large bright burst of light expelled from the surface. The monks described it as looking like fiery hot coals bursting out of the side of the moon. They then described this eruption twisting at random, before eventually calming down to the point where the moon pretty much looked normal again. So what on earth, I mean what on the moon, did these men just witness? Did something like that actually occur? Well let me show you footage of a different lunar event. Check out this video. Look at this sector right here. Did you see that flash? That, my friends, was an asteroid impact on the moon. A rock hit the side of the moon and there was a bright flash. In fact, here is the moon's surface in that exact area before the flash and here it is afterwards. Look at that, a brand new crater. But what does this have to do with the monks that we just discussed? Well some researchers believe that these monks may have witnessed a lunar impact, but it wasn't something like this tiny little crater guy right here. No, it was this, the Giordano Bruno crater. A large 14 mile wide crater. Witnessing this form from earth would probably look quite spectacular, similar to what the monks saw on that night in June. But there are still many skeptics to this claim. One, it's believed that the formation of this 14 mile wide crater on the moon would lead to massive meteor storms throughout earth. You see all that ejecta would go up out of the moon and then slam into earth and you know if an event like that happened around when these monks saw this event, obviously there'd be reports all over the world and we have no reports of any meteor storms. Two, a lot of modern experts actually believe this crater to be a lot older than just a thousand years. So what else could explain this strange event seen by the monks? What other strange moon lunar phenomena has been recorded throughout history? A lot of these strange lunar occurrences are known in the astronomy community as TLPs or transient lunar phenomenon. From red clouds, to jets, to weird colors, to comet light tails, today we will be discussing the many kinds of mysterious lunar phenomena. And we're starting with chapter one, strange colors. Now this section can be broken into two different categories, atmospheric tricks here on earth that make the moon look a different color, and more interesting to me, actual weird colorful things happening on the actual surface of the moon. Okay well we'll start off with the first category. The moon on a normal typical night way up in the sky looks a whitish gray. It looks like this, very beautiful. There might be little hints of blue depending on atmospheric conditions, but mostly gray. But sometimes when the moon is on the horizon it can look yellow, giving it that cheese moon color. This is due to scattered sunlight in our atmosphere. It can also look a deep red during a lunar eclipse, also due to scattered light from our atmosphere. Although during a lunar eclipse it actually is red on the moon, like it's not just an atmospheric trick. I mean it is an atmospheric trick, but it's actually on the moon. Like check out this photo from the lunar lander blue ghost. It's actually red on the surface of the moon, that's crazy. We should have sent the Apollo astronauts during a lunar eclipse, that would be terrifying. Anyway the atmosphere can also do other crazy tricks like creating a corona around the moon. All this stuff is very common, but there are some intriguing tales of strange lunar colors that occur on the surface of the moon from the past, and many seem to be connected to one particular crater, Aristarchus. This crater right here has many mysterious tales. For example, back in 1821 on February 5th, German astronomer Heinrich Wilhelm Matthias Olbers witnessed a wild event. Apparently a comet-like blue streak jet thing appeared to come out of this crater. Olbers described it to look very similar to a glow worm. The event lasted a few minutes. Many scientists at the time actually believed this to be a volcanic eruption. In fact there have been many instances even before like in the 1700s and the 1600s where little red spots would appear on the moon, and people would be like oh another volcanic eruption on the moon. In the decades and centuries following, more strange colors were seen over Aristarchus, especially in the fall of 1963. On October 29th, 1963 astronomers J.A. Greenacre and E. Barr were taking a look at the moon through a telescope at the Lowell Observatory when they noticed something strange. Greenacre stated this, at 6.50 a reddish orange color appeared over the dome-like structure of the southwest side of the cobra head. Almost simultaneously I saw a strange spot of the same color on a hilltop across Schroeder's Valley. Within about two minutes these colors had become quite brilliant and had considerable sparkle. I immediately called Mr. Barr to share the observation with me. His first impression of the color was a dark orange. No other color spots were noted until 6.55 p.m. when I observed an elongated streak of pink across the southwest interior rim of Aristarchus. No other hue could be seen on the inside or outside of this crater. The colored area along the rim of Aristarchus did not sparkle like the other two spots. By 7.15 all spots had disappeared. For the next month the two men searched for a similar event and on November 27th it happened again. But what's crazy and what really makes this story a little more legit is on December 28th a report came out from a bunch of astronomers in Japan about a pink patch over the same area or at least a similar area near this crater. By the way they did not know about the sightings earlier that year at the little observatory. Pretty strange but it's 2025. We got tech now. We got technology. We got satellites up there. We've been to the moon. Did any of this actually happen? Maybe. You see in 1971 when Apollo 15 was crossing over Aristarchus it detected a large amount of alpha particles. These particles were actually decay emissions of radon-222. A radioactive gas is coming from the crater like like even right now and some have speculated that these recorded lunar color phenomena events may be caused by eruptions of radioactive particles. For some reason maybe there's just a large out gas all at once and people who just happen to be looking at the moon and at that crater saw these events. So if you're looking up at the moon with some binoculars or a telescope be sure to take some time to inspect this crater right here. You might witness something strange. But we're moving on to chapter two lunar weather. So you may be surprised to learn that technically the moon has an atmosphere. I mean big picture the moon doesn't really have an atmosphere it's surrounded by the vacuum of space but technically there's a very very very very very thin atmosphere around the moon but there's no way you can see it at least most of the time. You see there's a phenomenon that occurs on the moon known as outgassing. So below the surface of the moon there's a warm layer of rock and the vacuum of space is able to extract those gases to the surface. Also as we mentioned with the earlier example of Aristarchus radioactive decay can also be a source of outgassing or maybe even seismic activity could loosen gas and bring it to the surface. No matter the mechanism can this outgassing be seen from earth? Well throughout history there have been hundreds of various cloud-like phenomena seen on the lunar surface. For example on April 24th in 1882 there was a meeting at the Liverpool Astronomical Society to discuss a recent fog-like enigma that the astronomers had noticed on the moon. The notes from one of their meetings stated this Mr. W.G. Rudd said he had often noticed appearances of what could only be accounted for by the existence of a lunar haze. On April 24th 1882 he had made note of a strange appearance of shadows near Godin and Agrippa. The shadows in and around this region and especially of the highlands west of Agrippa were misty as though obscured by a fog which gradually lifted to again be obscured. The intervals would last about 10 minutes. It's seen as though vapor or smoke was being ejected at intervals and as this vapor cleared away the details became more distinct. This account seems kind of legit to me. I mean it's not it's nothing crazy it's just looking at an area on the moon that seems to get cloudy over and over and over again. Yeah something in the atmosphere here on earth I guess could explain that but you would see if it were clouds in our own atmosphere then you'd be seeing haze all over the moon not just in one small area and this is also how I imagine outgassing would look like. Another similar example speaks of In 1958 two experienced astronomers were inspecting the moon with a six-inch telescope when they noticed a cloud over the ancient crater Alphonsus. This cloud obscured the rile in central peak to the point where they briefly disappeared. A similar incident happened that same year with an astronomer in the Soviet Union. He also noticed a mist-like cloud in Alphonsus. He conducted a The mist-like phenomenon seen in Alphonsus still remains a mystery to this day. Another cloud weather-like phenomenon that has been reported is the moon's sodium tail. Similar to a comet the moon also has an extremely faint tail. Way too faint to be seen with the naked eye. It was originally discovered during a particularly active Leonid meteor shower in 1998. During specific meteor showers when there's more meteor impacts here on earth same thing happens on the moon and if the meteor shower is particularly strong if it's a meteor storm even that can kick up enough dust on the moon that actually leaves a trail in space creating a tail. We're moving on to our next phenomenon bright flashes. So by far the vast majority of bright flashes on the moon are from meteor impact events. Impact events actually happen all the time and they can be verified because when an impact event happens we have surveyed the moon if we see a flash in a certain area we can go to that exact spot and then we can check to see if there's a new crater and oftentimes there are. In fact it's pretty clear because you can see the fresh regolith that's kicked up everywhere. There's also the automated lunar and meteor observatory aka Alamo in Alabama that films the moon and looks for flashes and it has captured hundreds of flashes some very brief and some a little more spectacular. So let's talk about that situation with the monks from the intro. One thing I didn't mention is that they claimed that this happened 12 times in a row. Now what does that mean exactly? I don't know if that means it like took a break for a minute and then happened again or if it was like like 12 back to back to back to back to back. I don't know exactly but a meteor impact really wouldn't explain it happening 12 times in a row. The other thing is no one else saw it like this was only seen by a couple monks in England. No one throughout the world, no one in China, no one anywhere saw this so people have their doubts but there is one theory that could explain it. You know when you see a meteor and it streaks across the sky and it's like if that meteor is actually heading directly towards you it doesn't streak across the sky it's like a little bright flash right? Perhaps they just happened to be in the line of a meteor that was between them and the moon and it was like a maybe it was a particularly bright meteor. Sometimes meteors come in like little pockets. Meteor bursts is what they're called and maybe that's what they witnessed. I don't know. I still think that sometime in the next not too long future there's going to be a decent size meteor impact. I'm not talking like catastrophic. I'm just talking like something bigger than usual maybe like a one out of every you know a one out of every 100 years and I think it's going to be pretty noticeable because we have a lot of people who are scoping out the moon these days at least compared to the old days. It's also possible that some of these flashes aren't even caused by meteor impacts. Research has also indicated that solar activity like CMEs and flares could create a form of lunar lightning. According to an article from NASA, powerful solar storms can charge up the soil in frigid permanently shadowed areas near the lunar poles and possibly produce sparks that could vaporize and melt the soil perhaps as much as meteoroid impacts. Also not all strange lights on the surface of the moon are short flashes. Some lights seem to last for several minutes and even several days. These cannot be explained by meteor impacts. Now in the modern era we don't really have any concrete examples of this but before the modern era back in the day these incidents were widely reported and the assumption at the time was that these glowing long-lasting lights on the moon were caused by volcanic activity and you might be wondering about lunar volcanoes like could a volcano erupt on the moon and could we see it from here? The moon has a long history of volcanic activity in fact modern scientists believe that there may have been magma spitting out on the surface as little as 50 million years ago. 50 million years is not long at all that's nothing. Think about this the moon is 4.5 billion years old and scientists state that lava may have been on the surface only 50 million years ago. So you're saying that 99% of the moon's history had volcanic activity and we just happen to live in that 1% that doesn't or maybe volcanic activity still happens on super rare occasions. If there is magma deep deep deep beneath the surface in theory is it at all possible that this magma can somehow make its way to the surface somewhat recently where it could have been Well on two nights November 28th and 29th in 1820 apparently one large and three small luminous spots were seen on the dark side of the moon. The large spot was similar to a star of the sixth magnitude so pretty faint and just barely visible to the naked eye but easily seen through a telescope. The next night on the 29th the large spot was still lit up but the smaller spots had faded one completely. Sounds like you know magma boiled up to the surface and cooled. I don't actually believe that that happened but an intriguing story. Another interesting eruption like account came from a Scientific America article in 1878. Apparently on the night of November 12th 1878 John Hams and his son as well as several other guests in Oskaloosa Iowa witnessed a volcanic eruption on the moon. They even provided a sketch. The father stated this it was only seen for one half hour through my six and a half inch telescope as plain as any other mountain scenery on the moon and of the same color. I would like to hear what you think of it. He wrote all this down and he sent it and the sketch to the superintendent of the U.S. Naval Observatory who asked them if there were any responsible Iowans who would vouch for him. So clearly he was a bit skeptical but why would you go through all that work all that trouble just to make up a story about a stream of stuff coming out of the moon. I guess it was Iowa in the 1870s so they're probably pretty bored. Okay so that's actually probably more likely anyway. Now obviously this wasn't magma coming out as he had stated that it was the same color as mountains on the moon themselves. So I'm guessing it was like an earthly atmospheric distortion trick and by the way that could explain a lot of TLPs. It's so hard to verify strange things happening on the moon because the atmosphere the atmosphere plays all these tricks. Look at this little video right here this is all from the atmosphere just distortion in the atmosphere. See how it's making things dance and making things kind of brighten up it messes with our perception. So when it comes to these events it's really important to have multiple spectators from different areas of the world. Like we have lots of cases where there's like lots of people together and they see something a bunch of monks a bunch of astronomers who are looking at a crater and they all witness the same phenomenon but there's no other events throughout the world. Very rarely do we get an event where multiple people saw it at the same time so it's just hard to verify any of this. But there are instances where the earth's atmosphere definitely did not play a factor because we have examples from astronauts on the Apollo 17 mission in December of 1972. Several different astronauts on board saw strange flashes flashlight phenomenon on the surface of the moon. The lunar module pilot Harrison Schmidt observed a bright flashlight phenomenon north of the crater Grimaldi. Now of course this could have been a meteor impact there probably was a meteor impact but others suggest that it may have been a cosmic ray penetrating his retina creating a flash in his field of view. Either way interesting occurrence. Now before we conclude I do want to briefly mention the supermoon. A supermoon is when a full moon is larger and brighter in the sky when compared to a typical full moon. Why is it larger and brighter in the sky? Well because it's closer to us. The moon's orbit isn't always the exact same distance as many might expect. Sometimes it's slightly closer to us during its perigee making it slightly larger in the sky and sometimes it's further away from us during this apogee making it slightly smaller in the sky. This is known as a micromoon. Here's a comparison between a micromoon and a supermoon. By the way the greatest brightest closest supermoon of this century is occurring on December 6, 2052. Be sure to mark your calendars. But yes I'd like to hear your thoughts on all this. Do you think any of this is even real? I mean obviously meteor impacts do occur small flashes do occur on the moon we have proof of that but what about clouds? What about colors? What about jets and weird things? Do you believe in any of this? I find it intriguing. I want to believe. So let me know your thoughts. Thank you so much for watching and we'll see you next time.