Scientists Discover Volcanic Activity In Moon's Tycho Crater
Recent findings from Chandrayaan-1, and NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) show evidence of recent lunar volcanism. These findings were published in the April 2012 issue of Current Science, a journal by the Indian Academy of Sciences. The focus of this study was Tycho, a young impact crater of the Copernican Age in the southern highlands of the moon. This crater has a well-developed central peak with an altitude of two kilometres. The discovery of large boulders on top of a crater with signatures of strong volcanic activities around a peak sheds light on the moon's history and composition. Read more
The discovery of a 2-km high peak with large boulders comfortably sitting atop inside a crater and signatures of strong volcanic activities all around the peak may eventually aid scientists to solve one of the long-standing lunar mysteries - what is the moon made of? Analysing data collected by Chandrayan-I and USA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, a team at the Physical Research Laboratory (PRL) in Ahmedabad, found evidences of volcanic vent, lava pond and lava channels as recent as 100 million years old inside the 'impact crater', thus implying that the moon was not a geologically quiet, rather, it was an active place. Read more
Impact melt pits are a type of lunar feature now seen in many LROC NAC images. This LROC image shows a newly discovered pit within the impact melt of a relatively small, unnamed crater. The pit is roughly circular with a diameter of ~16 meters. This diameter is smaller than the large pits found in mare basalt: the Mare Ingenii pit is ~130 m in diameter, the Marius Hills pit is ~65 m in diameter, and the Mare Tranquillitatis pit is ~100 m in diameter. Read more
Using powerful X-rays to measure lunar rock densities, a team of scientists have found why our Moon, contrary to Earth, has no active volcanoes, and traces of its past volcanic activity. The team led by Mirjam van Kan Parker and Wim van Westrenen from VU University Amsterdam suggest that the hot, molten rock in the Moons deep interior could be so dense that it is simply too heavy to rise to the surface like a bubble in water. Read more
Unique volcanic complex discovered on Moons far side
Analysis of new images of a curious "hot spot" on the far side of the Moon reveal it to be a small volcanic province created by the upwelling of silicic magma. The unusual location of the province and the surprising composition of the lava that formed it offer tantalizing clues to the Moon's thermal history. The hot spot is a concentration of a radioactive element thorium sitting between the very large and ancient impact craters Compton and Belkovich that was first detected by Lunar Prospector's gamma-ray spectrometer in 1998. The Compton-Belkovich Thorium Anomaly, as it is called, appears as a bull's-eye when the spectrometer data are projected onto a map, with the highest thorium concentration at its center. Read more
Scientists have found evidence of volcanoes on the far side of the Moon. The new discovery, reported in the journal Nature Geoscience is a rare example of volcanism on the lunar surface not associated with asteroid, meteor or comet impact events. Until now the best known examples of volcanism were on the Moon's near side in a region known as the Procellarum KREEP terrane. Read more