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So there was a little space around the far side of the Moon where I was shadowed from both the Earth and the Sun and that was pretty amazing. I could see more stars than I could possibly imagine. It really makes you wonder about our place in the Universe and what we’re all about. When you see that many stars out there you realize that those are really suns and those suns could have planets around them and all that kind of stuff.

During the event, which will happen on the eve of November 14, the Moon will appear up to 14 percent bigger and 30 percent brighter than an average full moon. This is the closest the Moon will get to Earth until 25 November 2034, so you really don’t want to miss this one.

Such was the case in From the Earth to the Moon as well, with the reference to “Monsieur Petit” and his discovery of a second moon. The real-life astronomer in question, Frederic Petit, was director of the observatory of Toulouse, and one evening in 1846, he claimed he had made an incredible discovery: a second moon in orbit around our planet. Two observers at the Toulouse observatory had claimed to observe the object initially, and soon, independent confirmation of this second moon’s existence was offered by an additional observer at Artenac in late March of that year. Despite the sensational claim, interest in the proposed discovery died down somewhat, that is, until 1865 with the publication of From the Earth to the Moon.

The path of 2016 HO3 tends to twist and drift over time, but Earth's gravitational pull keeps the asteroid contained: It never comes closer than 9 million miles (14.5 million kilometers) to our planet, and it never gets more than 24 million miles (38.6 million km) away, researchers said.

The lunar farside highlands problem refers to the curious and unexplained fact that the farside lunar crust is thicker, on average, than the nearside crust. Here we recognize the crucial influence of Earthshine, and propose that it naturally explains this hemispheric dichotomy. Since the accreting Moon rapidly achieved synchronous rotation, a surface and atmospheric thermal gradient was imposed by the proximity of the hot, post-Giant-Impact Earth. This gradient guided condensation of atmospheric and accreting material, preferentially depositing crust-forming refractories on the cooler farside, resulting in a primordial bulk chemical inhomogeneity that seeded the crustal asymmetry. Our model provides a causal solution to the lunar highlands problem: the thermal gradient created by Earthshine produced the chemical gradient responsible for the crust thickness dichotomy that defines the lunar highlands.

The moon's “horizontal glow” is a slim, bright crescent just above the lunar surface, observed by Apollo astronauts. Scientists think this phenomenon comes from lunar dust particles that scatter light. The recent study builds on previous research and shows that “neighboring dust particles can generate unexpectedly large electrical charges and intense particle-particle repulsive forces,” which lift particles of various sizes off the lunar surface, NASA officials said.

Using this detailed computer model, the LROC team ran simulations to see if they could reproduce the distortions seen on the Oct. 13 image and determine the size of the meteoroid that hit the camera. They estimate the impacting meteoroid would have been about half the size of a pinhead (0.8 millimeter), assuming a velocity of about 4.3 miles (7 kilometers) per second and a density of an ordinary chondrite meteorite (2.7 grams/cm3).

However, NASA thinks “a small natural meteorite” was to blame for the collision.

Last week, on May 24th, 2017, the ESA announced that the project had begun to detect impacts, which were made possible thanks to the flashes of light detected on the lunar surface. Whereas other observatories that monitor the Moon’s surface are able to detect these impacts, NELIOTA is unique in that it is capable of not only spotting fainter flashes, but also measuring the temperatures of they create.

“We found that the coldest places near the moon’s south pole are also the brightest places—brighter than we would expect from soil alone—and that might indicate the presence of surface frost,” said Elizabeth Fisher, the lead author of the study, published in Icarus. Fisher carried out the data analysis while doing research at the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa after earning her undergraduate degree. She is now a graduate student at Brown University.

This is all thanks to a special set of telescopic eyes that bend light in order to enlarge images - just like, wait for it - a Galilean telescope!

Like the telescope first used by the famed astronomer in 1609, the spider's eyes are essentially tubes with a lens at each end. One lens collects and focuses the light, while the other spreads it out and enlarges the image, allowing the spider to see a lot of detail for its size.

The visual acuity (how well the spider can differentiate between objects) of jumping spiders is good enough to allow them to see objects that are 0.07 degrees apart. The full Moon spans roughly 0.5 degrees, making it easy to spot if a spider decides to look up, Morehouse explained.

After decades of what seemed to be settled science, there’s new, conflicting evidence for how the moon might have formed.

Even small planets could have long-lived magnetic fields, crucial for atmosphere and water, raising fresh possibilities in the hunt for new worlds

A spacecraft has uncovered in lunar soil some traces of Earth’s ancient atmosphere that werekey to the development of complex life

Given the amount of solidified lava present, they estimate that the atmosphere would have exerted at its maximum a pressure of around 1 kilopascal, or around 50 percent higher than Mars’ atmosphere today. That’s still thin compared to the Earth, however, at sea level the pressure is just over 100 kilopascals. Over time, the moon’s weak gravity was unable to hold on to the gases, and they were lost to space.

Textbooks say that the moon was formed after a Mars-size mass smashed the young Earth. But new evidence has cast doubt on that story, leaving researchers to dream up new ways to get a giant rock into orbit.