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Apparent Lunar Activity - Historic Review

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Apparent Lunar Activity - Historic Review

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X-641-66-24

APPARENT LUNAR ACTIVITY:


HISTORICAL REVIEW

BY
JAYLEE BURLEY
BARBARA M. MIDDLEHURST
GPO PRICE

CFSTl PRICE(S) $

Microfiche (MF)

13u

W 653 July 65

APRIL 1966

GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER


GREENBELT, MARYLAND
___

N66 2 5 3 7 1
( A C C E S S I O N NUMBER)

1
3

IPAQESI

TMx s5f/b[
4

(NASA C R OR TUX OR AD N U M B E 1

mHRUl

3
0
(CATEGORY)

APPARENT LUNAR ACTIVITY:


HISTORICAL RE VIEW
bY
Jaylee Burley
and
Barbara M. Middlehurst

This paper was originally presented at the Symposium on Surface Features of


the Moon at the meeting of the National Academy of Sciences, October 13,
1965, in Seattle, Washington, and will be published in the Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences, May, 1966.

tLaboratory for Theoretical Studies, Goddard Space Flight Center


*Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, University of Arizona

.
APPARENT LUNAR ACTIVITY:
HISTORICAL RE VIEW
by
Jaylee Burley and Barbara M. Middlehurst
Recent observations 2 * of apparent activity on the moon have stimulated
interest in such reports by earlier observers. A literature survey covering
nearly four centuries has produced records of more than 200 sightings of
apparent lunar activity; of these, 159 were dated and considered reliable. This
material has been analyzed with respect to (1)solar activity as measured by
monthly sunspot numbers, and (2) tidal action by the earth. The frequency
distribution of the sightings around the lunar orbit shows well-defined peaks at
perigee and at apogee.
Survey of the material. More than 200 records of observations of temporary
bright spots, as well as of veils, obscurations, and brightening of the floors of
c r a t e r s and other small a r e a s have been collected. A catalogue has been compiled giving a brief description and date of the observation, the name of the
observer o r reporter, and the reference.* Many of the events occurred in
Alphonsus, Plato, Aristarchus and its surrounding area, M a r e Crisium, and
Theophilus; however, the location was not always given.
It is well known that the appearance of the lunar features is dependent on
lighting and that librations and details of the topography can cause special
lighting effects of a temporary nature. This is true particularly of the c r a t e r
Plato at sunrise: there is a gap in the crater wall, the floor of the c r a t e r is unusually flat, and a ray of light striking the floor can produce the effect of a
sudden glow of light from it. Multiple reflections can cause the illusion of
bright spots in certain a r e a s of the moon. The sudden illumination of a peak
beyond the terminator can give the impression of a bright spot on the dark side.
Earthshine, strongest just before and after New Moon, can produce unusual
lighting effects. All such possibilities of spurious events have been considered,
but relatively few reports have had to be discarded.

Reported changes in the topography have not been included because of uncertainty as to whether the changes were recorded at their first appearance so
that the date of the record might lack significance. The reality of many of these
has been often disputed (see, e.g. ref. 4). Kopal and Rackham's photographs5 of

*Available from either author on request, X-641-66-178.

the so-called luminescence in the Kepler region have been omitted from the
discussion here also. Many of the earlier observations used in the survey were
made by well-known astronomers such as Argelander, Bode, W. Herschel,
Olbers, Piazzi, F. G . W. Struve and Tempel, and this has added to their weight.
Similar details occur repeatedly (see, e.g. ref. 6).
Where possible, we have consulted the original reference; however, the new
(1964) edition of Houzeau and Lancaster's Bibliographie General drAstronomie6
was a reliable secondary source. It is a very valuable collection since at least
one of the authors, Houzeau, traveled extensively in many countries and was
able to consult a large
number of libraries and private book collections. J. H.
Schroeter, an enthusiastic and careful German amateur astronomer of the eighteenth century and friend of William Herschel, also contributed contemporary
reports of many observations between 1780 and 1790 in his Selenotopographische
Fragmente
The Astronomischer Jahresbericht contained many references t o
lunar events for the years 1899-1963.

'.

The first report known to us of apparent lunar activity was recorded in


Harrison's Description of England (see Lowes'). This r e f e r s to an event in
March 1587: a bright spot on the dark side of the moon "directly between the
pointes of her homes, the mone being chaunged not passing five o r six daies
before." Dated records have been found of two events in the seventeenth century,
twenty-six in the eighteenth, and thirty-two in the nineteenth. In this century,
ninety-eight events had been reported up to July 1965. The largest number of
lunar events occurred in o r near Aristarchus, where forty-nine observations
were recorded. Fifteen accepted reports mentioned apparent activity in Plato;
however, several other Plato reports were rejected by reason of the topography
of the region which leads to the peculiar effects at sunrise mentioned earlier. In
twenty-two dated records, the location was not given.
It is of interest to include a few of the descriptions of the observations as
recorded. J. H. Schroeterg wrote in the Astronomisches Jahrbuch f o r 1792 that
he observed on September 26, 1788, Ira whitish bright spot shinincsomewhat
hazily and 4" to 5" of a r c in diameter, as bright as a star of 5th magnitude, about
1' 18'' southwest of Plato and in the bright mountainous region bounding M a r e
Imbrium
It was visible for fifteen minutes.

."

Another observer, R. H a r t lo, wrote in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: "On the night of the 27th December, 1854, between 6 and 7 P.m-,
the moon was very bright. I had brought my 10-inch reflector to bear upon the
moon;
. I now turned my attention to the light part of the disk, and my eye was
at once attracted by an appearance I had never Seen before on the surface of the
moon, although I have observed h e r often during these last forty y e a r s
there

..

. .

were two luminous spots, one on either side of a small ridge, which ridge was
in the light and of the same colour as the moon; but these spots w e r e of a yellow
flame colour, while all the rest of the enlightened part w a s of a snowy white,
and the mountaintops that were coming into the light, and just on the shadow
side of these spots were like the light of the setting sun reflected from a window
a mile or two off. I observed it for five hours . I called the attention of three
gentlemen, my neighbors, and my own household, and they all described the
11
appearance as I saw it myself, and have given above

..

... .

Most of the observations were described as a "bright spot" or a 'brilliant


point", but twenty stated that the color was r e d or reddish. Color determination
is a particular problem with visual observations and must be regarded as
subjective.
Possible correlation with sunspot numbers. In a recent letter to Nature,
Flamm and Lingenfelter considered the possibility of a relation between the
number of occurrences of transient lunar events in the vicinity of Aristarchus
and the yearly mean sunspot relative numbers. Sunspot counts were chosen as
a convenient measure of solar activity by these authors since yearly sunspot
numbers are available from 1715, whereas statistics of solar flares were not
available sufficiently far back to be used for their analysis. They deduced a
negative (or inverse) correlation with solar activity; however, they did not
analyze the general distribution of sunspot relative numbers.
A more detailed statistical investigation12 based on 103 events from the
present survey and using monthly rather than yearly sunspot numbers has been
made. Monthly sunspot relative numbers have been tabulated from January,
1749, until June, 1964, covering 2586 months 13*14. The findings are given in
Table I (from ref. 12). The number of observations in Flamm and Lingenfelter's
analysis, shown in the second column, has now been increased to twenty-two to
include the observations by Bode from March through May, 1789, as three entries
and by Kosyrev in November and December, 1961, as two; each was listed as a
single entry by Flamm and Lingenfelter. Percentages of the total number of
events are shown in the third column. Statistics for events in all areas of the
moon are given in the fourth and fifth columns and indicate a trend similar t o
that observed for events in Aristarchus. The last two columns show the total
number of months falling in each group of monthly mean sunspot relative numbers
from January, 1749, to June, 1964. Over 41% of these months had low sunspot
numbers (0-30), whereas very few months had high sunspot activity. Comparison
of the data shown in Table I, particularly of columns 4 and 5 with columns 6 and
7 does not suggest a correlation between the occurrence of lunar events and the
degree of sunspot activity but rather that the distribution of the events is a random
one superposed on an asymmetric distribution of sunspot numbers.

Table I
Records of Lunar Events According to
Monthly Sunspot Relative Numbers l2

Monthly Mean
Sunspot No.

Events From
All Areas of
Moon
(J.B. & B.M.)

A ris tarchu s
Events
(from F.&L.)

Total Months

No.

76

0 to 30.0

13

59.1

37

35.9

1064

41.1

30+ to 60.0

18.2

26

25.2

69 1

26.7

60+ to 90.0

4.5

20

19.4

423

16.4

90+ to 120.0

4.5

7.8

22 0

8.5

120+ to 150.0

13.6

2.9

109

4.2

150+ to 180.0

4.8

52

2.0

180+ to 210.0

1.9

21

<1

210+ to 240.0

<1

<1

240+ to 270.0

<1

22

99.9

Total

No.

100

2586

100

lo3

Tidal effects and stresses in the body of the moon. The mutual gravitational
attraction of the earth and the moon is GMm/R2 where G is the constant of gravitation, M and m the masses of the earth and the moon, and R the distance between
their centers of mass. Disruptive stresses a r e set up in the lunar material
through variations in this quantity from point to point, and for elements of the
moon situated at mutual distance dR, the maximum stress component per unit
mass tending to tear them apart is

s = 2GMdR
R3
In a similar formula for stresses set up on the earth in the moon's gravitational
field, M is replaced by m, and it is readily Seen fiat the forces on the moon a r e
4

greater by a factor of 81. The mean ecc-ntricity in the moon's orbit, which
affects the value of R, is small, 0.055, but by reason of the factor l/R3, the
change in (1)from perigee to apogee is of the order of thirty p e r cent. Stress
changes through the anomalistic month a r e therefore significant.

Figure 1 shows a histogram in which the frequency of 159 dated lunar events
is shown. The unit for the abscissa is the anomalistic month; perigee is taken
as 0.0 and apogee as 0.5. The mean anomalistic month is 27.6 days, though the
actual time from perigee to perigee can vary by several days. Each division of
0.1 month is equivalent to slightly l e s s than three days.
The excess of events near perigee and apogee is much greater than could
be expected as a result of chance and indicates a causal relation with tidal
stress. A t o r near perigee, maximum cracking could be expected; at apogee,
the point of maximum relaxation of the crust, a "squeeze" results15*16. Conditions relatively favorable to instability of the lunar material might be expected
at each of these times. A similar excess near apogee and perigee was found by

2 30
*

P
-

> 25
W

~~

0.0

~~

082

014

0,6

0,8

ANOMALETIC PERIOD
Figure

1 - Each division equals 0.1 anornal istic period or approximately


2.76 days. Perigee i s shown as P, apogee as A.

LO

Green out of twenty-five events. The nature of a mechanism which might


produce a bright spot in the dark portion of the moon is not at present clear,
but internal causes seem likely and lunar volcanism is suspected. Whatever
the mechanism, tidal forces are probably significant in relation to at least
some of the events.
Lunar phase. The age of the moon (the number of days past New Moon) was
computed for all dated events. Up to 1900, there is a large concentration of observations of such spots in the period before First Quarter, the majority being
three to six days after New Moon; the concentration is not s o pronounced for
recent observations. This is certainly an effect of observational selection
because of the convenience for observation of the three- to six-day moon during
the early part of the evening. Except during eclipses, no lunar observers look
at the moon at New Moon as it is then in the daytime sky and very near the Sun.
Nearly all of the early observations are of points of light on the dark part
of the moon. Only when telescopes of larger aperture became more commonly
available to lunar observers did observations of changes on the illuminated part
of the moon become possible for the majority of these. Also a given intensity
change is easier to observe against a dark background than an equivalent change
added to a bright one.
Summary. Records of events of activity on the moon are m o r e numerous
than had been expected. The events are probably due t o internal causes on the
moon that are accelerated near perigee and apogee through tidal disruption.
Our findings do not support any correlation with sunspot activity, contrary to
results suggested by earlier workers.
Acknowledgments. The authors gratefully acknowledge the assistance of
Dr. Raynor L. Duncombe who kindly provided the lunar parallax computations
for the dates of observations prior to 1778. J. Combridge, J. Greenacre, and
P. Moore drew attention to a number of the reports, and E. A. Whitaker reviewed
all the records with one of us.

References
1.

Greenacre, J., Sky and Tel., 26, 316 (1963).

2.

Sky and Tel., 27, 3 (1964).

3.

Physics Today, 19, 98 (1966).

4. Moore, P., Ann. N. Y. Acad. Sci.,

123,797
6

(1965).

5. K o p l , Z . , and T. E. Rackham, Sky and Tel., 27, 140 (1964).


6. Houzeau, J. C., and A. Lancaster, Bibliographie General d'Astronomie, ed.
D. Dewhirst, 2nd edition, (London: Holland Press Ltd., 1964), p. 1233.

7 . Schroeter, J . H., Selenotopograpische Fragmente, (Gottingen: Joh. Georg


Rosenbusch, 1791).
8. Lowes, J . L., The Road to Xanadu (London: Cambridge Press, 1927), p. 180,
510.
9. Schroeter, J. H., Astr. Jahr. (1792), p. 176.
10. H a r t , R., Monthly Notices Roy. Astron. SOC., 15, 89 (1855).
11. Flamm, E. J., and R. E. Lingenfelter, Nature,
12. Middlehurst, B. M., Nature

205, 1301 (1965).

209, 602 (1966).

13. Waldmeier, M., The Sunspot-Activity in the Years 1610-1960, (Z'irich:


Schulthess and Co., 1961).
14. I.A.U. Qtr. wlll. on Solar Activity, No. 133-148 (Ziirich: Eidgen-Sternwarte,
1961- 1964).
15. Lambert, W. D., Report on Earth Tides, ( U . S . Coast and Geodetic Survey,
Special Report 223, 1940).
16. Pekeris, C. L., Appendix to Report on Earth Tides, (U. S. Coast and Geodetic
Survey, Special Report 223, 1940).
17. Green, J., Ann. N. Y. Acad. Sci.,

123,403 (1965).

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