craters

Star Stories – Glasgow Science Centre On Tour Special

/ Stephen Mackintosh / Leave a comment

glasgow-science-centre

As part of the Star Stories programme up at Abriachan Forest we’ve invited the On Tour outreach team at Glasgow Science Centre to kickstart our daytime events on April 27th.

The GSC team will deliver indoor stargazing activities as well as meteorite handling, and comet and crater making. They’ll also be bringing a sample of their interactive science exhibits.

If you’d like to attend please book via the eventbrite link here and also look out for more astronomy events over the brighter months.  We have plans to purchase a Hydrogen alpha telescope in the next few weeks which will form the basis for some outdoor solar events.  Follow this blog or keep tabs on my facebook page for developments.

There’s still a few tickets left for the last dark sky observing session in March available here.

Lunar Maria

/ Stephen Mackintosh / Leave a comment

Happy New Year everyone.  There’s been a lovely bright full moon on display over the new year, allowing me to venture out for well lit evening walks, stopping every so often to study the bright lunar disc both unaided and with binoculars.

One very obvious thing you can notice from looking at the moon, especially naked eye, is the contrasting dark and light regions.

aHR0cDovL3d3dy5zcGFjZS5jb20vaW1hZ2VzL2kvMDAwLzAxOS8wOTEvb3JpZ2luYWwvanVseS1za3l3YXRjaGluZy1wb3J0bGFuZC5qcGc=

The dark regions are called lunar ‘maria’ which is latin for ‘sea’. These regions are relatively smooth and have a low abundance of craters, which suggests they’re younger than the brighter more heavily cratered regions.

But how can the moon, a dead world with no significant geological activity, have younger regions?

The answer is from giant impacts.

Pluto-asteroid.thumbnail

Imagine a massive asteroid hitting the moon. Not only will it generate a huge crater but the heat from the impact will cause the solid rock underneath to become molten and well up in a huge overflowing lava event. This overflow pours across the surface of the moon a bit like applying fresh plaster to a wall, masking all the old craters and creating what we now see as ‘maria’.

I’ll be talking about this and much more at our special moon night on the 27th Jan out at Abriachan Forest.