 This is Think Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. Welcome to our show, which is Think Tech Hawaii Research in Manoa. I'm your host, Pete McGinnis-Marc, and today we have our guest is Dr. David Trang, who is a postdoctoral research associate within the Hawaii Institute Geophysics and Plantology at UH Manoa. And welcome, David. Thank you. And I believe you're going to be telling us a little bit about some of your recent lunar research studies. Oh, yes. So you've been doing a variety of other topics. You mentioned to me offline that you're studying carbon on Mercury, but today it's the moon. Yep. All right. So for our viewers, why don't we start with a little bit of a background information on the moon. We've got a picture of the moon, which you can show us the first slide. And just walk us through. Here we see a telescopic view of the moon. Right. The near side of the moon, as everyone has seen before, it's a nice beautiful body that we have near our home earth. You can see that there's two major areas. There's the dark areas, which is known as the maria. It's mostly made of basaltic material, which are basaltic rock, like what we see in Hawaii. And then you have the highlands area, which is the blighter, white, grayish area. So down at the bottom, for example, that's the highlands. Yeah. And that's mostly made of anorthosite, or the rock or anorthosite. And as you can see, and then I think the third thing I would like to point out is you can see these beautiful craters, these circular, morphological objects throughout. And then they have these nice, beautiful rays that radiate from the center. That's the very bright filamentary material, which is stretching. That's true. Talk about a little bit today. Right, right. And just for a bit more background, we've obviously been to the moon before. How many moon landings, where did they go, that sort of thing? Well, so I mean, we had Apollo 11 to Apollo 17, unfortunately, 13 didn't make it. And they all landed in the near side in different areas to just sample, you know, different regions that are a little bit different from each other so we can get a more broader understanding of them. Right. And that time period was like between 69 and 72. Right, yeah. Yeah, unfortunately, before I was born. I was just high school and college, so for example, for my own undergraduate thesis, I was looking at the Apollo landing. Oh, that must mean so. I wish it happens in my life, time to see this. You are the focus of today's show. So it sounds as if we didn't learn everything we could through the Apollo missions, for example. You have been working with various people at Manoa to do additional lunar research. What kinds of things have you been doing? Most of the things that I've been really focused on is to kind of look at the moon and look at the different landscapes on the moon or what we say in geology, you know, the geomorphology of the moon. I want to know why is that mountain here? Why is this crater over here? Can we use these craters to understand these different age of the surface? And also, like, volcanics as well, and how do they differ from Earth? So that's what I've been really focused on is a lot of understanding impact craters, volcanics, various volcanoes on the moon, and a little bit of just kind of like surface processes called space weathering. So those are kind of like the main three I've been looking at. And are you using data from the Apollo missions? Because there's other spacecraft still in orbit around them, for example. The majority of the data that I'm using is called the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which was launched in 2009. And also using another spacecraft that frequently, the Kaguya spacecraft, which is from a Japanese mission. And both missions provided brand new, great data sets, which over 20, 30 years technology have gotten better. So we can now focus on using these new data sets instead of relying on the old Apollo's. All right, although presumably the Apollo landing sites where they bought samples by two Earth, a good calibration point. Oh, definitely. I mean, without them, we wouldn't be able to produce the amount of science that we can now and have the same interpretations. Without them, you would be a little bit more lost in the dark. OK, well, speaking of this high-level research which you're doing, we've just seen a picture from a telescope of the moon. Let's go to the second slide, because I think the second slide shows one of your analyses. And David, you're going to have to help the viewers here. What a nanofaze iron. Oh, yes. We're looking at, is this the whole moon or just the near side? This is almost the entire moon, including the near side and the far side. So that's the side that we cannot see. But we're limited from 60 to negative 60 degrees latitude. That means we can't see the poles. And part of that is just because of the data that we originally have. There's not a good lighting up on the poles just because of its angle relative to the sun. So the data that we're showing here is from 60 to negative 60 only. And these are data collected either from this Japanese Kaguya satellite or from the US. This one in particular is from Kaguya. So this what we're seeing here is not a data product directly from Kaguya. Basically, Kaguya produce these spectral data. And we apply these fancy radio transfer models to produce what we call data products, so the next level of taking the data and producing something new. Because this looks very different from the regular telescopic photographs. Oh, yep, for sure. What do you think this is actually showing? So yeah, so what we're seeing is this thing called nanofaze iron. So what nanofaze iron is all these really tiny iron particles. They're about less than like 100 nanometers in diameter. So they're really small. And these particles are embedded on the surface of grains within these glass. So you have a grain, you have a mineral, and then it's draped and covered by glass. And within that glass are these nanofaze iron. And these are due to this thing called space weathering. Right, with people on the show talking about space weather. So without that atmosphere, the moon is bombarded by particles and high-energy particles, micrometer rights, small tiny rocks. So that particular image could be interpreted in terms of the age of the real topmost layer that we're seeing. That's actually something we're trying to figure out right now. That nanofaze iron map that I showed you is actually work on the way, actually. It's not published yet. It's almost there. We've heard it first here, folks. And so what we're seeing is how abundant these things are, but we don't know if we can use it to actually age the surface yet, especially that map in particular. And the reason is if you look at the Mare area, it's really bright and nanofaze iron, but in the Highlands, there isn't so much. Part of that reasoning is probably because if you look at the Mare, if you look at how much iron is it in the actual rock, there's a lot of iron. The Highlands, not so much. So it could be compositional as well as age. Correct. And you've brought along in the next slide, I think, we'll see just a little bit of a thin section or whatever it is. So again, explain to us what it is we're looking at and what the scale bar, 10 nm, is that nanometers? Yep. So this is a nice image. Pretty much a really close-up image of a grain where you can see the A.N. stands for Northite, which is a type of mineral. And on top of that, you can see that there's this glassy rim, which is a rim in this image. And then the iron metal is these nice round spheres that are embedded inside this glassy rim. And this is a thin section of a real... This is a T.M. image. All right. So transmission electron microscope of a real lunar rock. Yep. And this is the sort of thing which will be responsible for the various changes in grayscale in the previous image. And I think our next image also will show us something a little bit different. This is microphase. Now, explain again difference between nanofase and microfase. So the microfase is pretty much the same idea, but the iron particles are much larger. So instead of being less than 100 nanometers, we're looking at iron particles that are greater than 100 nanometers. So you can see that the distribution between the nanofase and the microfase are different. For example, the fresh craters, these craters with bright rays, they still stick out in both the nanofase and the microfase. But the Maori is a little different. And you can see in the microfase, like there's areas in the Maori that are dark. There's parts in the Maori that are bright. Where you say the Maori, as we're looking at this image, basically think about in the middle where it's zero degrees longitude and in the middle where it's zero degrees, it is the equator. The equator is running from left to right through here. So the Maori, what we see from Earth, is a zero zero or something. Right, right. And then you can combine these, right? Yeah. All right, so the next slide. So, you know, when you add the nanofase and the microfase, this is so the idea is what we call some microscopic iron particles. And the idea to add them together is because they're both due to space weathering. So when you combine them, you can see, like, what is the effect of space weathering? So this is where we could actually use this map potentially to use to age surfaces. So when they are individual, you probably can't age surface. But when you combine the nanofase and microfase together, you might be able to. So this hasn't been calibrated yet to any actual dates, which could because we have those Apollo samples, you know, without them, we wouldn't be able to do any calibration. But with those Apollo samples, you may be able to calibrate this map to actual Apollo ages. And so perhaps we can see differences both in composition and differences in age. Right, yeah. And I always ask people, who cares? Why is this potentially important? Why are you spending a lot of time producing these images? What do you see as the importance? I think the biggest importance of this is we're providing a brand-new tool to the planetary science community. This tool has been used previously, a predecessor map, which have been used greatly by the community where they can use it to age different places on the surface. They can understand these things called, for example, these lunar swirls, these beautiful swirly patterns on the surface. And it is still a little bit highly debated in how they formed. And by understanding space weathering, we may have figured that out. So it helps with very different various processes that occur on the moon. OK, I'm a bit of a space cadet myself. And I'm really excited that we're starting to hear about both space agencies as well as private companies going back to the moon. Is this your data? Is that the kind of thing they would be reliant on? Do you see a connection between your studies and what might have a practical application? Possibly. I can't think of any applications to them right now. Mostly on the science side, but on the technological side, I think that's something the advantage is, if we have them, they could probably use in the future. Because presumably they need to know where's the best place to line for the resources. So yeah, and there is some compositional dependence on these maps. But that's one of the things that we're trying to remove when we look at these maps is to get rid of the composition. So that we can just see the degree of space weathering in general. OK, right. Because I've heard that there's some iron deposits on certain parts of the moon, going to the lunar poles, for example, for lunar ice. Is that sort of thing will presumably dictate where people want to try and land if we send people back to the moon? And that is definitely actually a future project that we're going to be working on within the next year. So that we want to, with new calibrated data of the poles, as you saw from those maps, are only limited to 60 degrees to negative 60. But with the new data that includes the poles with calibrated data, we may actually extend these maps to include those poles as well. So then we can also understand the space weathering that occurs up on latitude. Well, I know you brought along some specific examples and we'll get to those in the second part of the show. We need to take a break right now. So let me just remind all our viewers, you are watching Think Tech Hawaii Research in Manila. I'm your host, Pete McGinnis-Mark, and I guess today is Dr. David Trang, who's a post-doctoral research associate from HIGP at UH Manila. And we'll be back in about a minute. So see you then. Bye. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. Hi, I'm Pete McGinnis-Mark, and every Monday at 1 o'clock, I present Think Tech Hawaii's Research in Manila, where we bring together researchers from across the campus to describe a whole series of scientifically interesting topics of interest both to Hawaii and around the world. So hopefully you can join me 1 o'clock Monday afternoon for Think Tech Hawaii's Research in Manila. Day of the Big Game Watching at home just doesn't feel the same But on the list is who's gonna drive It's nice to know you're gonna get home alive Plan for fun and responsibility Choose the GT Captain of our team Miss the GT For every game day, assign a designated driver. And welcome back, as our promo just told you, you are watching Think Tech Hawaii Research in Manila. I'm your host, Pete McGinnis-Mark, and I guess today is Dr. David Trang, who is a post-doctoral research associate within the Hawaii Institute of Physics and Planetology at UH Manila. And David, we looked at the global view of the moon in the first half. Let's now delve into a few of the other studies which you've been doing at a much more localized level. And I think you've been concentrating more on trying to understand the way landforms have developed. Is that correct? Yep. And what kind of techniques do you use to do that? Actually, we use almost every practical instrument that comes out of these orbiters, Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, we use a lot of the instruments. So anything that ranges the entire light spectrum, the electromagnetic spectrum. So we use radar data, we use thermo-infrared, we also use, you know, invisible and near-infrared as well to understand these objects. And we also use altimeter data, which tells us topography. So by using all these data, each one would tell you something a little bit different, you know, and they give you hints to how these things form or whatever property you're trying to look for. And you take all this data, you put it together, and make these observations, and then you try to find a model that just fits right into these observations. Sounds quite challenging. Let's take a look at one of the examples which you have brought along. And here we're seeing, this is the same geographic area on the moon, is that correct? Yep, this is in the Mare. The two images, one on the left, the grayscale is that of regular satellite photograph? Yeah, this is what we call a 750 albedo map. So this is pretty much, this is really close to what you see with your naked eye. 750, 750 nanometers, red light almost. Yeah, okay. And then the outline that you're seeing is actually outlining the pyroclastic deposit itself. So pyroclastic is all volcanic explosive deposit. This is what we're seeing here. And that's what we're seeing as the volcanic crater. And the colors on the right hand side, we've got an image which appears to be elevations. Yep, this is what we call a topographic map. So what you're seeing is red is much higher, and purple and white is very low elevation. Okay. So what's really cool about this is when you look at this 750 nanometers, so if you were in a spacecraft and saw this feature here, this volcanic feature, you'd probably just think it's just flat. It just has this nice beautiful crater in the middle. But when you actually look at the numbers and look at the topographic map and you should really stretch these numbers out, you can start to see that these things are actually more of a dome, kind of like the volcanoes we see here in Hawaii. That's right, and I understand you worked at the Hawaii Volcano Observatory for a while, so you would be a great person to actually do a comparison between volcanic lion forms, which one sees on the moon, with what we have here in Hawaii. Yeah, and it was great to finally bring my knowledge from the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory and bring it out. That feature we saw in the slide be similar perhaps to the Pu'au cone on Hawaii, or would it be a much bigger landform? These things erupted a little bit differently from what we're seeing at Pu'au, since Pu'au is mostly Hawaiian-type eruption, so continuous fountain of lava flying out of these volcanoes, where what we're seeing here is what we call localized pyroclastic deposits on the moon. And the reason why we call them localized is because there's two types. There's localized, which is small, and then the regionals are very big, cover big areas of the moon. And it's currently modeled right now, the current hypothesis is that these things have formed due to these things called volcanic eruption, or pulse, of lava being spewed out and thrown on around the center of eruption. Okay, let's take a look at another slide, because I think we've got a variety of different data sets which we've been working with. And this one, in the first half you were talking about glass, here we're seeing another image, which looks like a volcanic crater on the left-hand side. Tell us more about what we're seeing on the right. So we're seeing kind of a similar thing to the last one, but instead of looking at topography, we're actually looking at how much glass is on this deposit. So what we've learned about these volcanic deposits on the moon is that they can range from really crystalline, so a lot of minerals, versus something that's just completely glass. So what we're seeing in this deposit is, so from zero to 100, so white is being low glass abundance and 100, red is a lot of glass. That means most of the stuff is made out of glass, and that's important because it tells us something about the eruption itself. So when it erupts, it creates these nice plume, it's still cloud, right? Within, as the lava's flying out, we can tell if it cooled quickly or it cooled slowly. So if it cooled fast, you make glass, and if it cooled slowly, you make crystalline beads. So by knowing if you made glass versus crystalline, now we can predict at how thick was, what's the density of material was spewed out at once from these volcanic deposits? And some of our viewers may have seen postcards of the fire fountain events from Pu'u'oh, presumably this is the same kind of thing. And can you then, if the glass content tells you something about how quickly the lava cooled, that tells you what, is it the composition or is it the height? It just, mostly it tells you like the density of the material as it was coming out. So when it comes out, it tells you how, was it easy for the heat from these lava to escape or did they have to bounce around between particles? So that means if it's mostly crystalline, it means it was really dense with a lot of different lava parts where the heat couldn't escape the gas column. And you don't mean density in terms of it's like, you mean how many per unit volume? Right, of particles, yeah, exactly. So if it's glassy, then the heat just easily escaped, then it bounced off another particle and just kind of just left. So this is a remote way of telling something about what the eruption plume must have been like, perhaps millions if not billions of years ago. Yeah, great. We're a wonderful detective story. And it's amazing that these things are still there. You know, after billions of years, we can just go back and look at this. And I think you've also got, and the next slide, we've got one which looks at a place where we have actually sent astronauts. Right, so. Here we've got three images. Again, tell us what we're looking for. So yeah, so it's kind of a background. It's important to test our model and make sure that our models actually work. So we want to test it to an Apollo site. So we test it to the Apollo 17, which actually landed on a volcanic deposit. So what you're seeing on the left is that 750 image again, kind of showing the different geography of the area. So the sculpted hills, the shorty crater, which is the area where we sampled this landing site and so on. What you're seeing in the middle is this thing called shorty, or the glass abundance map. And you can see that I'm really zooming in the shorty crater because that's where we sampled from. And what you're seeing is, if you look on the bottom left, the deposit was really, it's really red because it had a lot of glass. And that's exactly what we observed. And in these three images, we're seeing exactly the same part of the lunar surface. So these images, you could overlay either the glass or the one on the right, which is a mineral over the photograph and say, here we know astronauts back in 72 picked up a sample from shorty crater and this is what they found. Yeah, and that's the excellent part. So that's what we're really showing and emphasizing is, like even the olivine, which was found in the Apollo samples on the right, which is really bright in shorty crater. And what we've noticed is our model actually do match up with the actual sample that came back. So the data, the modeling that we've done for these different pyroclastic deposits, it appears to be, could be accurate because we have tested it to something that is of known. But to do all of this kind of research, you've got to have a variety of different skill sets, right? You sort of, you understand volcanic eruptions, you understand how the process satellite data, you understand how to combine topography. How did you get into this line of work? Oh, that's a good question. Basically, when I was growing up, when I was back in third grade, I remember going through books, we had to check out a book that we wanted to read. And I wasn't really the person who read things like novels that had plots. I was the guy who was like, I wanna learn something new. And I stumbled onto space, books on Venus. And to realize that we actually have maps of these planets and high resolution images, that's where I really learned, this is what I wanna do because all my life, I've always liked to learn maps, right? I like looking at maps. And by having these different wavelengths of light, it tells you something different. So I got more into it and I just went through college, study as much as I can through physics and geology. I try to be as eclectic as possible. So you have a physics background, that presumably is some computer skills that you have. Anybody who's watching, for example, who would also be interested in the moon, what should she be doing if she's trying to become like yourself in the lunar scientist? I think it's important to get a taste of as many different parts of natural science as possible because planetary science just encompasses entire planet, right? So you really wanna cover your geology, your meteorology, your physics, your astronomy and chemistry and just take a little bit of each and try to put them together and see the bigger picture. And where do you go from here in your own research or use of, there's still much to learn about the moon? Is that the best place to study or you've got a grant to work on Mercury, I understand. Yeah, so I mean, I'm still continuing and I'm still learning more about, there's so much more to learn about the moon and the moon is a great place to learn because it's the only place where we actually went to the ground, grabbed some samples and brought them back. So there's still so much more data to analyze, there's so much data to synthesize, which is also another important part. We spent a lot of time looking at one data set, understanding it really well, but it's also important to also to bring all the other data sets and make a bigger story out of it. And why is a good place to do this kind of research? Oh, definitely. I mean, we have some of the best scientists in the world. When I go to the Lunar Planetary Science Conference, people are like, oh, you go to the University of Hawaii. Wow, you guys have all these amazing people doing great science. So it's a great honor to work with all these people who do such amazing work and to learn from them and to grow from there. And the personalities are great. Everybody is very, very friendly. I absolutely love working in Hawaii, and I definitely recommend it to anyone. This has been a fascinating conversation, David. Unfortunately, we're almost out of time with the show, but I want to thank you again. And let me just remind our viewers, you have been watching Think Tech Hawaii research in Manoa. I'm your host, Pete McGinnis-Mark, and I guess today has been Dr. David Trang, who is a postdoctoral research associate within the Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology. And so until next week, have a good week, and we'll see you next Monday. Goodbye.