Recently Chinese lunar lander Chang'e-4 made several importnt discoveries. It has shown that cotton could be grown on the Moon and that the dark side of the Moon is colder during night than this one that faces Earth. The website livescience explains this phenomenon in this way:
"The difference between Chang'e 4's reading and the Apollo missions' is "probably due to the difference in lunar soil composition between the two sides of the moon. We still need more careful analysis," Zhang He, executive director of the Chang'e 4 probe project, told Xinhua.
In other words, something about the lunar dirt where Chang'e 4 sits is probably causing the soil to retain less heat overnight than the Apollo landing sites did. But researchers still aren't sure what that something is."
I suppose the explanation may be that the Earth heats the "light side" of the Moon with infrared radiation emitted towards the Moon. But maybe I am wrong and the power of infrared radiation emitted there is too weak.
From some time I have been doing experiments indicating the possibility of cooling the Earth by the Moon. My hypothesis is that cold infrared radiation cools a surface of Earth. I have made already experiments with ice which suggest that infrared radiation was able to cool. I have bought a thermographic camera and tested which surfaces reflect cold infrared radiation. The camera could measure temperature in a range -40 to +330 degree of Celsjus.
January 19th 2019 during night I measured temperature of the Moon and sky without clouds. Temperature of air was -5°C.. Temperature of the Moon was - 39°C.
"The difference between Chang'e 4's reading and the Apollo missions' is "probably due to the difference in lunar soil composition between the two sides of the moon. We still need more careful analysis," Zhang He, executive director of the Chang'e 4 probe project, told Xinhua.
In other words, something about the lunar dirt where Chang'e 4 sits is probably causing the soil to retain less heat overnight than the Apollo landing sites did. But researchers still aren't sure what that something is."
I suppose the explanation may be that the Earth heats the "light side" of the Moon with infrared radiation emitted towards the Moon. But maybe I am wrong and the power of infrared radiation emitted there is too weak.
From some time I have been doing experiments indicating the possibility of cooling the Earth by the Moon. My hypothesis is that cold infrared radiation cools a surface of Earth. I have made already experiments with ice which suggest that infrared radiation was able to cool. I have bought a thermographic camera and tested which surfaces reflect cold infrared radiation. The camera could measure temperature in a range -40 to +330 degree of Celsjus.
January 19th 2019 during night I measured temperature of the Moon and sky without clouds. Temperature of air was -5°C.. Temperature of the Moon was - 39°C.
The temperature was much lower than I predicted in my previous post "Does moonlight reduce temperature - part II". I based on information taken from WIkipedia. But from Chinese research we know that average temperature of the Moon could be lower. The website science.nasa.gov suggests that temperature of the Moon just under its surface could be constant, even -40°C:
""The tunnels offer a perfect radiation shield and a very benign thermal environment," says Robinson. "Once you get down to 2 meters under the surface of the Moon, the temperature remains fairly constant, probably around -30 to -40 degrees C."
I checked temperature of sky without clouds. It was -43°C
""The tunnels offer a perfect radiation shield and a very benign thermal environment," says Robinson. "Once you get down to 2 meters under the surface of the Moon, the temperature remains fairly constant, probably around -30 to -40 degrees C."
I checked temperature of sky without clouds. It was -43°C
Probably it was the lowest temperature which the camera could register. Probably it was not any infrared radiation from space except radiation of Earth's atmosphere. So I decidet to check how atmosphere distorts measurements. February 2nd 2019 during night I repeatet measurement of Moon temperature. It was almost cloudless night. Air temperature was +2°C. Relative humidity was 80%. I took photo of the Moon by my infrared camera when the Moon was not covered by clouds. Temperature was -29°C, ie. 10°C more than before. Unfortunately I did not measure relative humidity previously.
I also measured the temperature of the sky in a place clouds free. It was -36°C, ie. 7 degrees more than before. Perhaps previously the sky temperature was less than -43°C, but the camera was unable to register a lower temperature.
I began to suspect that the result is related to humidity and air temperature. The next evening, I went to do more measurements. Unluckily it happened the sky was completely clouded. Admittedly in the visible light the Moon was visible through the clouds, but in the infrared - not. I decided to check how it is with the Sun and clouds. On February 24 at 4 p.m. I started to measure temperature of the Sun. Air temperature was -1°C, relative humidity 43%. The sky was covered with clouds, but the Sun was clearly visible. Depend on the thickness of the cloud layer I have got different temperatures of the Sun: +80°C, +56°C, +35°C and even +15°C.
The temperature of the sky in a cloudless place was -36°C. So in the day (-1°C, humid. 43%) the temperature of the sky was the same as at night (+2°C, humid. 80%) and 7 degrees higher when the temperature at night was - 5°C with unknown humidity.
The temperature of the ground and clouds was - 6°C.
Results above are results of preliminary measurements that will be continued.