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No sound

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On Sunday night

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we have two cool events that are happening at the same time. We have a lunar

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eclipse, when the moon passes into the shadow of the Earth. So we'll go

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from being very bright to turning this beautiful red color. The effect of the sunrises

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and sunsets of the Earth being projected onto the lunar surface. We also have a supermoon

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the closest full moon of the year. So those two events are occuring at the same time.

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And that's a very rare event. Hasn't happened since 1982, won't happen

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again until 2033. So Sunday night's a really great opportunity to go out

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and see a beautiful moon change right before your eyes. It's going to be a

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beautiful show.

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The moon will be fairly high in the sky when it goes into eclipse.

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You don't need to worry about too far away from trees, but you want to be able to have a pretty good

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view to the sky and just sit back and enjoy the show.

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Measuring the temperature of the surface of the moon especially during the eclipse is a really

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important thing because with that measurement we can learn about the

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characteristics, the properties of the surface of the moon. And particularly during an eclipse

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we learn about the upper, upper most surface. So what we see is that surface

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that stays warm longer generally have larger blocks or

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smaller pebbles and things like that. Where surfaces that cool off very quickly have

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smaller sand-sized particals and so by measuring how the surface

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of the moon, the temperature of the surface of the moon changes during an eclipse, we learn about

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the makeup of the surface of the moon. How the structure

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of the surface. And we can't do that normally. So it's these

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eclipses that give us a really, really unique opportunity to make specific

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measurements about the surface that we just can't do at any other time.

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No sound

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So the Lunar Reconnaissance

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Orbiter has been at the moon now for over six years. And in those six years we've

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learned an incredible amount about the surface of the moon and the lunar

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environment. What we've seen that's most surprising that the moon is in fact a dynamic place

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We're seeing changes on the surface on the moon that are occuring in the time that LRO has been

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at the moon. We're seeing new impact craters that have formed in the six years that we've been there.

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We're seeing the evidence of migrating water across the surface

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Not a lot of water. A small amount of water. But still the view that the moon is a

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static unchanging place is now completely different.

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With the eyes of LRO right at the surface of the moon, we're able to see that

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there are incredible amount of changes going on revealing that the moon is

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far more dynamic than we ever knew before.

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Some of the coolest things that we've learned about the moon is that there's been

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evidence for volcanism that occured on the moon far more recently than

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we ever knew before. So for instance before LRO launched we thought that

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volcanism on the moon ended about a billion years ago. Now we have evidence for

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that volcanism may have occured as recently as recently as a hundred million year ago or perhaps even

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more recently than that. And that's surprising because that changes our entire view of how the interior heat

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of the moon has disapated over time.

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LRO data and the results from LRO have completely rewritten

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the textbooks of what we know about the moon. I think the moon

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that we knew before LRO is now completely different. Of course the moon hasn't changed it's just

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our understanding of it. But the data that we've gotten from LRO

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has led to profound changes in how we view the moon and how

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view the moon in the future. And you know the great thing about

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the LRO data is that we're studying it now, but it's going to be

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a data set and a legacy that will last for generations to come in our understanding

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of the moon.

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People should care about the moon because it's our neighbor

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in the sky. It's actually very close to the Earth compared to the

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distances to other objects in the solar system. And by studying the moon we can learn a lot

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about the history of the Earth. You know if you look surface of the moon there are

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places on the moon where we have rocks that are four-and-a-half billion

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years old. And so by looking at the moon we can learn about the earliest history of the solar

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system. The record of that portion of time in our solar system is almost all but

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gone from the Earth. So in order to understand what was happening just after the

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planets formed studying the surface of the moon is one of the most interesting and best

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places to do that. So when we look at moon we're really looking into

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the deep history of the Earth as well and I think from that we can learn a lot about

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how our planet has changed and how all planets have changed over time.