10-27-2020, 07:52 AM
This is interesting because there have been attermpts to detect water on the Moon before and they haven't really led to much. I haven't read the paper yet, but suspect it's a detection of water ice using "reflection" spectroscopy. Sunlight reaches the moon's surface and is reflected off the surface. Some of that light is absorbed by frozen water at specific wavelengths (around two and three microns and also longer mid-infrared wavelengths, but they are tough to observe, even using Sofia which observes very high up in the atmosphere). What surprtised me in the announcemernt is that the ice was detected in sunlight. It means the water can still be dcetected in high temperatures envirtonments which tells me there is probably quite a lot of ice, especially in the shadier places on the moon.
We used this technique on an asteroid a couple of decades ago at UKIRT and came up with a tentative detection of water ice. I can't remermber if it was published in a peer-reviewed journal, but do remember it made a bit of news in the astro community at the time.
We used this technique on an asteroid a couple of decades ago at UKIRT and came up with a tentative detection of water ice. I can't remermber if it was published in a peer-reviewed journal, but do remember it made a bit of news in the astro community at the time.