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Thursday, October 28, 2010

Photo: "Rejected" Protons Offer a New View of the Moon


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A new technique that looks at solar particles "rejected" by the moon is helping astronomers better understand the way lunar soil absorbs solar wind, the charged particles flowing outward in all directions from the sun, according to a September 2009 study.

Above, an illustration shows the concentrations of hydrogen atoms bouncing off the moon, as seen by India's Chandrayaan-1 moon probe.

Picture courtesy Elsevier 2009 (Wieser et al.), ESA-ISRO SARA data