Originally posted by FreeThinkerIdealist
Is it atmosphere, or a thin haze ... like fog?
PSSSTTT thin haze or 'fog' requires some atmosphere...
Don't forget that there is NO QUESTION that the moon HAS an ATMOSPHERE...
The only point of contention is how much...
John says the atmosphere is breathable for a short time, I believe the number he said was "like at 18,000 feet on Earth...
We are also sure the atmosphere is not very high above the surface...
As it has no dust and no water vapor...
I would like to try an experiment in calculations...
One of the points made against an atmosphere is that meteors would burn up...Not if its only a thin shallow atmosphere... there would not be enough
time I have seen a meteor impact the surface (so they say) Makes a bright flash... To become incandescent to a magnitude of 7 I would think there
had to be some oxygen... (Yes its possible that the heat released this from the ground, but I doubt it would do so quickly enough to give us the
results witnessed
Smart 1 impact shows us a 'cloud of dust" (ESA's term) that spreads over a 2x3 kilometer area... the animation is cool... it does NOT behave like
you would expect in a vacuum
Endymion... Lick observatory shows 1 photo clear as a bell... all craters sharply outline... a few days later the craters are obscured by a huge
"cloud' cover
Nasa Lunar Data sheet says there is an atmosphere
Boston University says there is an atmosphere high in sodium that reaches out 2 lunar widths from the surface (and I believe could account for the
Saffron colored sky)
We have seen several pictures that show clouds...
Astronomers have reported occasional clouds on the moon for hundreds of years... NASA even catalogs these sightings in their TLP catalog
and in 1961 JPL/NASA printed this...