{"id":538847,"date":"2026-07-08T07:50:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-08T07:50:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/538847\/"},"modified":"2026-07-08T07:50:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-08T07:50:12","slug":"transient-lunar-phenomena-the-moons-flashes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/538847\/","title":{"rendered":"Transient lunar phenomena: the Moon&#8217;s flashes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">According to the science of <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Transient_lunar_phenomenon\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">transient lunar phenomena<\/a>, observers have reported brief lights, colors, and hazes on the Moon for at least a thousand years, and astronomers still cannot fully explain them. The British astronomer Patrick Moore coined the term for a 1968 NASA catalog of reported lunar events.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">On June 18, 1178, five or more monks in Canterbury reported that the crescent Moon &#8220;split in two,&#8221; with &#8220;a flaming torch&#8221; springing from the gap, so that &#8220;the moon throbbed like a wounded snake.&#8221; During Apollo 11 in 1969, Houston relayed a report of &#8220;lunar transient events reported in the vicinity of Aristarchus,&#8221; and Neil Armstrong radioed back that there was &#8220;an area there that is considerably more illuminated than the surrounding area.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Modern explanations fall into a few classes: gas escaping the Moon&#8217;s interior, meteorite impacts, and electrostatic effects. Lunar Prospector detected radon &#8220;emanating from the vicinity of the craters Aristarchus and Kepler,&#8221; the same region that produces the most reports.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Previously:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"According to the science of transient lunar phenomena, observers have reported brief lights, colors, and hazes on the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":538848,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[908,61,60,54000,82,247,5758],"class_list":["post-538847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-astronomy","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-mysteries","tag-science","tag-space","tag-the-moon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=538847"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538847\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/538848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=538847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=538847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=538847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}