Magnetic Bubbles on the Moon Reveal Evidence of "Sunburn"

Every object, planet or person traveling through space has to contend with the Sun's damaging radiation -- and the Moon has the scars to prove it.

Research using data from NASA's ARTEMIS mission — short for Acceleration, Reconnection, Turbulence and Electrodynamics of the Moon's Interaction with the Sun — suggests how the solar wind and the Moon's crustal magnetic fields work together to give the Moon a distinctive pattern of darker and lighter swirls. Lunar swirls, like the Reiner Gamma lunar swirl imaged here by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, could be the result of solar wind interactions with the Moon's isolated pockets of magnetic field.