 It's 1 o'clock on a Monday afternoon, so you must be watching Think Tech Kauai's research in Manawa. I'm your host, Pete McGinnis-Marc, and every Monday at this time we bring you some exciting new science results from the University of Hawaii at Manawa, and today we welcome back Casey Honable, who is a graduate student at UH Manawa in both the Institute of Geophysics and Planetology and the Geology and Geophysics Department. We first saw Casey when she was flying a balloon in Antarctica, and today you're going to tell us something equally exciting, almost as exciting, in that you go to Monacaia and use the telescope to look for water on the moon. So Casey, welcome back. Thank you. It's a pleasure to have you here. Another exciting thing for a graduate student to do, and basically today's topic is using monacaia telescopes to find water on the moon. Is that correct? That's correct. But I'm a little bit older than you, as you can probably tell, and during the Apollo missions, I was under the impression that the moon rocks are completely dry. Am I mistaken? At the beginning, that's what we thought, that the Apollo samples showed that there were no water abundances in Apollo samples. Okay. So over in 2008, three spacecraft made discovery of a three micron band, which is due to water absorption on the moon. And three micron refers to a wavelength of light, which is longer wavelength than what our eyes can see. So it's in the infrared portion of the spectrum. And so as part of your studies, as I recall from your last visit, you actually used the spectral data to study parts of the solar system, right? So now you're coming here to talk about the moon. Yes. That sounds great. And you make these measurements from monacaia, and I think you've actually brought a picture of yourself at the summit of monacaia. So let's take a look. Yes. So that's the NASA infrared telescope facility on the left, and that is me and Heather Kaluna inside the telescope with the mirror in the background. All right. And you're bundled up because obviously the summit of monacaia is like 4,000 meters or 14,000 feet. 14,000 feet. Wow. Yeah. It's pretty chilly up there. All right. And I'm sure all of the viewers will want to know, do you actually get to put your eye behind the mirror of the telescope? How is this done? No. Unfortunately, we don't get to look through the telescope physically. We look at computer monitors that show us the image of the telescope. All right. So I actually went to the summit years and years ago and worked on the 88-inch telescope, and there you could actually look through the eyepiece. But this is a more advanced telescope. And how often do you go there, or how often do you collect data? So I've actually only been to the summit of monacaia once for observing. Every other time that I do observing, it's down in my office in Manila. Okay. So it's much more comfortable to make observations. Yes. And the total number of data sets that you've been collecting, because you went and reported your results that we're talking about today at a recent conference in Houston, right? That's correct. I went to the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston, Texas, and I represented my work to a bunch of planetary scientists that have been looking at water on the moon for a couple of years now. Okay. So is this a pretty new discovery? How did we get the idea to go and use a telescope to look for water on the moon? So my advisor and I, Paul Lucy, had this idea that, well, if you can see water from a spacecraft, why couldn't you see it from the ground, as long as you could remove atmospheric water absorptions? So we gave it a shot, and we were able to see it. Okay. And forgive me if I make a mistake here, but you're not looking at puddles of water on the surface, right? No. You're looking at, is it water bound in the minerals, or is it water ice, or what is it you think you're detecting? We believe that we're looking at water attached to other minerals. So mixed in with the soil that's on the moon. So even the astronauts, when they were kicking around the lunar soil during the 60s and 70s, they weren't able to see any of this water. No. It's in low concentration, so it's a little water molecule alone, basically. And I think as today's conversation goes on, you'll tell us a little bit about where the best places are to find it. So let's look at the second slide, which I think gives us a little bit of a historical background. And Casey, explain to us what this diagram is, some colored squiggly lines, but I'm sure it means something more to you than it does to me. So this is a, this is spectra from the spacecraft Deep Impact, which was observing the moon from one to 4.5 microns, which is in the infrared. And the water absorption feature that we're looking for is that little squiggle which looks like a check mark at three, at three microns. All right. And again, the colors that I see have a shorter wavelength than the one like one. So that the visible portion of the spectrum should be off to the left. Wavelength is on the bottom, and then the vertical axes of reflectance is how much of the light at that wavelength bounces back towards the detector. So this spacecraft Deep Impact in 2009 found these little check marks in the spectra, right? Yes. And that gave you and your advisor, Paul, who see the idea to go to moniker telescope. Basically, yes. After years of finding this in the data and from spacecraft, we, there's a bunch of questions that have been unanswered about water on the moon. So we decided, well, with a ground-based telescope, we can attempt to answer some of these questions that the spacecraft data brought up. But this is pretty fundamental. We've had Jeff Taylor and Linda Martell on the show before, and Jeff is a great person who does sort of planetary geochemistry and is sort of deeply involved in trying to understand the origin of the moon through a giant impact with the Earth. I thought that all the water was driven off during that big impact. So just the concept of finding water in the minerals on the moon, that's pretty new. Yes, it is definitely new. And doesn't that change quite a bit of our understanding of, say, how the moon evolved? Most definitely. There are some locations where we think we are seeing water that came from the interior of the moon. But there are also most of the locations that we see water is where hydrogen from the solar wind, so the sun pushes a bunch of hydrogen out and it comes and interacts with the lunar surface to create a three-micron water feature that we are seeing. And again, regular viewers, we've had David Trangon, who's talked about space weathering a bit. It's the same kind of process, except here, what I think you're saying is the solar radiation actually does something to the hydrogen in the lunar soil. Right. It reacts with oxygen and to create some water, basically. OK. So it's the strength of the sun that's probably creating it. And in my mind, that raises the question, well, does it mean that the younger parts of the moon have less water than the older parts because they haven't been irradiated for so long, or? Not necessarily, because there is a thermal gradient across the moon as the sun passes and you have a lunar time of day. So some water can come and then go as well. OK. So as nighttime comes, the water... And presumably, comets, if they were to hit the moon as well, would just dump a whole load of water somewhere randomly across the lunar surface, all right. So I think the next slide, you're going to show us a little bit about part of your strategy with the telescopes. Yes. And this is what. It looks like a very fuzzy, early 50s TV picture to me, but it is... What is it we're looking at? So this is what we actually see from the infrared telescope facility on Mauna Kea. So this is an image of Sulpicius gallus, location on the moon, which is a pyroclastic deposit. Pyroclastic is explosive. Explosive volcanism. Lots of volatiles. Lots of volatiles, yes. And so what you see, this yellow arrow is pointing to a black strip, which is where our spectra or our data is collected. Oh, right. And what's the approximate width of this image that we're looking at? So our image is probably about 20 kilometers, but our resolution on the moon is actually 1 to 2 kilometers. Okay. So this image is a little smaller than the Wahoo. Yes. For scale. Yes. And then you would be able to detect diamond head, perhaps, but not anything smaller than that. That's correct. Okay. All right. The stripe is a vertical black stripe, maybe on TV. You can't see that too well, but you just get a single piece of data. So along that stripe, there are different pixels. So for each pixel, we can get a data collection site. All right. Okay. And then moving on from this one, I think the next slide will show us something about your observing strategy. Yes. Okay. So do you go at night? And obviously, on Earth, it's nighttime. Not necessarily. It depends on when the moon is up, because at the IRTF telescope in the infrared, we can observe during the day. Okay. So depending on the phase of the moon or where it is in relation to the sky, we can observe at night or into morning hours. All right. So here we have the near side of the moon. Yes. What we see from Earth. Obviously, to observe from a monoclea, you have to be on the near side of the Earth. And the different colored stars. Yeah. So those are different types of scanning procedures that we used to look at water on the moon. And so the red stars are an equatorial scan, where we were looking at how water behaved as a function of temperature. The yellow is a latitudinal scan, where we looked at how temperature varied as a function of the latitude. So going from equator to the pole. And then the blue stars are geological sites, where in spacecraft data showed an abundance of water. So we went back to those sites to see if there really was an abundance. Okay. And of course, the red stars at least, which are going around the equator of the moon, presumably you're seeing different times of day on the moon. That's correct. If the surface gets really hot, the equivalent of high noon, would you expect to see more water being released or less? Actually expect at high noon on the moon to see less water. Because as the moon heats up, the water moves away from the hot spot. Okay. And to the colder regions. Is there a good time to go and look at the moon? Do you get just as the sun rises, when it's been the most cold or just before sunset? So the best time so far that we have noticed is looking along the morning or the evening. Okay. And then would you try and do this from the equator to the pole? In other words, the yellow stars at that time of day? Yeah. So far, we have been able to observe the moon during the morning time for the latitudinal yellow stars. Okay. And we are soon going to be looking at the evening side of the moon. How long does this take? Like five minutes or do you have to point the telescope at a particular spot for a couple of hours? I have no idea. So because the moon is a big object in the sky and it's really bright, we only have to look at a specific spot for a very short amount of time for like 0.5 seconds. Oh, really? And then how quickly can you reposition the telescope to look at a different point? It depends on the location that we're looking at. If we want to be very specific like we do for the geological sites, we really take our time to pinpoint the location that we think has an abundance of water. If we're just doing one of the latitudinal or equatorial scans, we don't necessarily look for a specific site, so finding that location is a lot easier and less time consuming. All right. And while we've still got this slide here, the geologic sites, they have been determined using other satellite images or earlier telescopic observations. Yeah. Those were used using other telescopic observations from space and they have been shown to have an abundance of water higher than any background abundances on the moon. And that's been determined from the same reflectance of light in the three micron band. That's correct. All right. So Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter might be one of the spacecraft that you've used or something. So we use the Moon Mineralogy Mapper to look at the geologic sites. And that's the Indian spacecraft. That's correct. Yeah. Okay. Very good. So the mid-program break, Casey, but I hope when we come back, you can actually tell us something more about the results. And I know you've gotten exciting careers as a graduate student. If we have time, we'll also deal with some of that. So let me just remind the viewers, you are watching Think Tech Hawaii's Research in Mana. I'm your host, Pete McGinnis-Mark. And today we're hearing all about water on the moon from Casey Honevall, who is a graduate student within HIGP and the Geology and Geophysics Department. And please come back in about a minute when we hear about some of her results. So see you then. Hi. My name is Bill Shaw, our host of Asian Review, coming to you from Honolulu, Hawaii, right here in the center of the Pacific Ocean. Asian Review is the oldest of the 35 of our so-shows broadcast by Think Tech Hawaii. We've been in production since 2009. Our goal is to provide you, the viewer, with information, breaking information about events in Asia, Asia being anything from Hawaii west to Pakistan, from the Russian Far East, south to Australia and New Zealand. We hope to see you every Monday afternoon at 5 p.m. And welcome back to Think Tech Hawaii's Research in Mana. I'm your host, Pete McGinnis-Mark. And my guest today is Casey Honevall, who is a graduate student at the Institute of Geophysics and Planetology and the Department of Geology and Geophysics at Eurich Mana. So Casey, before we get into the results, you were flying a balloon in Antarctica last time we saw you. How have you made the transition from radio astronomy to more traditional astronomical observations? What's your career path? So actually, the transition from radio to infrared was pretty easy. Radio astronomy is actually very hard to do. So when coming to infrared astronomy, it was actually much, much easier. Don't have to build heterodyne receivers, which take a lot of cooling, whereas the infrared detectors only take liquid nitrogen cooling. And so is your career going to point you in the direction of planetary spectral studies or what's the game plan? So I'm basically trying to become a successful scientist in planetary sciences, but I have the ultimate goal of wanting to be an astronaut. Wow. Well, I think you're already a successful scientist. The next step is to become an astronaut, obviously. I'm very jealous of doing that. Let's briefly return to some of the results though, because this is exciting stuff that you've been discovering. And I believe you presented this paper not only in Houston, but also in a conference in Japan quite recently. So you're going to have to tell us what you've discovered. And I think the next slide will start off that conversation. So again, please explain for the viewers what it is we're looking here. So the image that you saw before of the Sulpicius gallus region from the IRTF, this is the spectra that we get from that image. So what we're looking at is basically the characteristic features that you see on the moon. And so when we're looking for water, we are looking for a discontinuity between the 2.5 and 3 micron region. And you can see that it kind of looks like a step down. And then, overlaid on that is a mid-ocean ridge basalt glass, which has water inside of it, so that you can really see what water looks like. And that's what more stands for mid-ocean ridge basalt. Correct. OK, so that's your calibration point if you want to have a better term. Yes. All right. And these are real data that you collected from the Nokia. And they show that you've got this discontinuity at just the right place. So how much water would actually be responsible for this breaking slope? So for something of this step size, we see that there is about 150 parts per million water abundance. OK. And again, that doesn't mean there are puddles on the moon. No. But that's way more than we were expecting even 10 years ago, right? That's correct. And you looked at various places across the moon. How does it vary in a spatial context? Depends on the location. So for our geological sites of interest, where the spacecraft data showed an abundance of water, we see abundances in the hundreds. Whereas if there is no anomaly of water at a location, we see about 50 parts per million water abundance. OK. And I bet you brought a slide that shows some of these results, didn't you? Yes. Yes, OK. So let's take a look at the next one. All right. So this is what I was asking before the break. Here we've got your latitudinal scan. Yes. On the right-hand side is the moon showing where I guess your targets were. And then on the left, again, explain what we're seeing here and why it's significant. So the left graph is showing the actual abundances that we're measuring on the moon at different locations. So as we work from the equator at 0 degrees north to 75 degrees north latitude. So from equator to pole. So we can see that our red dots are the locations that we observed. And you can see that there's a slight non-linear trend upwards. So as you're at the equator, there's very little water. But as you go towards the poles, we have an increase in water. And then the yellow line is showing the moon mineralogy map or data, which was a spacecraft that observed the moon and looked at the water abundances. And so the obvious question is, what's happening at 60 degrees north? So actually, this was one of the very first processing runs of the data. And recently, we have seen that the 60 north data originally was not processed properly. So at 60, there is actually more water than is depicted here. All right. And the one up at 7 or 800. That was actually supposed to be a... That's the label. That's the label. Oh, OK. All right. So we live and learn on these other things. Let's look at the next slide, because I think that shows some of these geological targets of interest, right? That's correct. So we see here, we've got Plato, Archimedes, Plopikius, Gallus, and Rima Bode. And these four are pyroclastic deposits, where in early moon history, the moon had volcanic activity and had an eruption, which created these pyroclastic deposits. And these are really old, right? Yes. They've been 0.8 billion years old. That's correct. They've been there a long time, OK? And then Copernicus is the central peak of a crater. So it's not a pyroclastic deposit. It was emplaced due to an impact. All right. And this is the whole moon with sort of every longitude spread out. So what we see from the Earth, presumably, is some like 270 years to 90s or something like that. Roughly. You can just see, perhaps, in detail where the Apollo landing sites were. So you aren't going back to where the astronauts landed to try and calibrate your data. This is sort of you've identified other geologic targets. That's correct. All right. OK. Interesting. And I think the next slide will show us a few more results. We can go to the next slide. And this is basically telling us that there's some variability. That's correct. So if we look at the latitudinal scan again, we see that there's roughly 0 to 100 ppm of water abundance on the moon. And those are the yellow dots in this plot. And that's what we took to be the background abundance of water on the surface. But then when we lit and looked at the geological sites, which are the blue dots, we saw that they are higher than what we expected our background to be. So we were able to confirm the moon mineralogy map or data seeing abundances in water. We were also able to verify that our observing techniques were from the ground-based telescope at Mauna Kea were actually correct. OK. Now, you've presented this at two different international conferences. How does the science community react to your observations? Are they enthusiastic? Do they disagree with your data? How was it received? So most of the planetary community is very enthusiastic about the results and the data that we're collecting, mainly because the spacecraft data is limited. And you can't get all the answers that you're looking for, whereas while we have some issues with ground-based data, we have the ability to address some questions that spacecraft can't currently address. So we're looking at water variation as a time of day, as a time of temperature, as a function of latitude. We also look at the entire water feature, whereas spacecraft data can't necessarily do that at this moment. So the typical person in the street, why should she care about that? Well. There's water on the moon. I can't go swimming on the moon. What's the scientific significance? So water on the moon is very important for the reasons of space exploration. If we wanted to go and land on the moon and use water as a resource for fuel, for oxygen, for water, for the astronauts to drink, we would need to know where it is and how much there is, if it's worth going to try and drill out the water. Okay. But I was under the impression that the best candidate landing sites would be at the lunar poles, where they're permanently shadowed areas with water ice. Why would they prefer to go to one of the places you can see with a telescope, as opposed to the south pole, for example? Well, from a communication standpoint, it's easier to communicate from one of my locations versus the south pole. But the temperatures are presumably the same. The temperatures are very cold. The temperatures at my locations, they can be cold when the sun's not shining on them, but on average, they're covered in sun for a good lunar day. Okay. So this might indeed sort of help decide where astronauts first set up the lunar base then. Potentially. Potentially. Yeah. Good. Well, I know you're doing some other things as well. So in the last few minutes, you're off to Houston for the summer as well, where the manned spaceflight lab is. Yeah. What are you going to be doing in Houston over the summer? So I will be doing an exploration internship at the Lunar Planetary Institute this summer under Dr. David Crane. And that sounds great. Can you tell us a bit more about it? How many people are going? What kinds of things might you be studying? Sure. About 10 of us going, a couple of them are from Canada, a couple of them are from the UK and a couple of us from the United States. As far as I know, I will be doing something related to human exploration on the lunar surface. Okay. And that could include looking at landing sites that we could potentially go to. And as a budding astronaut, is it coincidental that you're right next to Johnson Space Flight Center? No. Yeah. So I mean, this is just an amazing opportunity for University of Hawaii graduate students. And I know David Crane, the person you'll be working with, and he works on impact craters on the moon and that sort of thing, but you know you're setting yourself up for yet another appearance on Think Tank when you come back, but certainly I wish you well on this, Casey, but I think we're starting to run out of time, so let me just remind the viewers, you've been watching Think Tech Hawaii's research in Manoa. I've been your host, Pete McGinnis-Mark, and my guest today has been Casey Hunnibal, who is a graduate student within the Institute Geophysics and Planetology and the Geology and Geophysics Department. Well, Casey, thank you again for being on the show. Thank you very much. Have a great time in Houston, and we'll look forward to some of your stories talking to astronauts or deciding where people are going to land on the moon in the next few years. So thank you again, and for our viewers, we'll see you again next week. So join us then for another exciting episode of Research in Manoa. Goodbye for now.