On Sunday and Monday, those in the Western Hemisphere with clear skies were fortunate enough to see the last total lunar eclipse of the decade. As the moon took on a distinctly redder shade just before midnight Eastern time, livestreams of the phenomenon showed a flash of light suddenly and briefly emanating from the lunar surface.
On April 30, the Pu’u O’o crater on Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano suddenly collapsed. It was the starting point for the volcano’s monthslong eruption, which went on to produce 320,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools’ worth of lava that transformed the landscape and ultimately destroyed 700 homes.
(Trilobites): The moon is far more than a largely dead orb. Our planet’s pale satellite is the creator of tides, the catcher of meteors and the only other world in the starry ocean where humanity has set foot. But scientists are still not entirely clear how it was made. Solving this mystery would not only reveal the moon’s origins, it would also help explain our own planet’s evolution.
Research published in December in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics, reveals that the cause of this north-south auroral asymmetry is the angle at which the sun’s solar wind and magnetic field approaches Earth.
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