The permanently shadowed regions of the Moon have baffled scientists since long. Now, a team has claimed that the most intriguing areas on the earth’s most closest neighbour may hide fluffy dirt and water ice.
These dark regions on the moon’s poles are usually deep in craters where sunlight can’t reach, thus telescopes and satellites have no way to image them in regular light.
Now, researchers at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, US, have used a more devious method to view these areas and found that the regions may be relatively abundant in water ice, space.com reported.
To view these areas, scientists used a special light, called lyman alpha emission, that is reflected off hydrogen atoms floating throughout the universe that spreads in all directions, even hitting areas in shade. This light shines in a particular, narrow wavelength band.
“Instead of sunlight reflected straight off the craters themselves, we go an indirect route,” said study co-author Kurt Retherford, a senior research scientist at the Southwest Research Institute. “Our light shines off hydrogen atoms spread throughout the solar system.”
The Lyman Alpha Mapping Project, calibrated to measure this emission, is aboard Nasa’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter satellite circling the moon. New data from the project found that the moon’s shaded regions are darker in lyman alpha emission than other areas of the moon.
“Our best explanation for this difference in reflectance at the poles is that the surface is more porous and fluffier,” Retherford said.