What are these weird flashes of light on the Moon? #shorts

What causes the bright flashes of “transient lunar phenomena”? Or TLPs. These are short flashes or colour changes seen on the Moon’s surface that can last anywhere from a few seconds to a few hours. And they’re not a recently spotted thing, they’ve been reported for centuries and we still don’t understand them. They’re completely unpredictable, and while sometimes seen by multiple observers, other times it's hard to confirm reports. So what could be causing them? One of the leading ideas is that they’re caused by dust floating above the Moon’s surface scattering light in a way that creates these flashes or glows. Like lunar glitter. But it could also be flashes caused by meteorite impacts with the Moon’s surface, or they might not even be real, they could just be observational effects from viewing the Moon through telescopes on Earth. And that’s really the issue here, we just don’t have consistent, high-quality observations of these events. Because despite over a decade of spacecraft in orbit around the Moon, none have ever detected one of these flashes. That could in part be due to the fact these missions are designed to only see a tiny portion of the Moon at once, so that they can take detailed pictures from orbit. So could the Artemis program help solve this? No, probably not. Astronauts might happen to catch one of these flashes while in orbit or on the surface. But TLPs are so unpredictable, and maybe occur only a few times per year, so we’d have to get really lucky for that. If we really want to understand these Moon flashes we’d need a dedicated monitoring mission, able to watch the entire Moon continuously with one instrument, and then rapidly follow up any detected change with a second instrument to get the close-in detail. The closest we’re going to get to that is ESA’s LUMIO mission, the LUnar Meteoroid Impact Observer, which will continuously observe the far side of the Moon to catalogue all the impacts from tiny meteorites, that we know hit the Earth but burn up in the atmosphere so we don’t have a clear record of them. LUMIO will record the flashes from these impacts, but has no way of following up what’s been seen in greater detail. LUMIO is set to launch in 2027, so maybe we might get some answers then, but for now, transient lunar phenomena remain exactly what their name suggests: brief… elusive… and still unexplained. Video filmed on a Sony ⍺7 IV Video edited by Martino Gasparrini: martino.freelance@gmail.com Video produced by Marina Hui & Dr Becky Smethurst --- 📚 My book, "A Brief History of Black Holes", out NOW in hardback, paperback, e-book and audiobook (which I narrated myself!): http://lnk.to/DrBecky --- 👕 My merch, including JWST designs, are available here (with worldwide shipping!): https://dr-becky.teemill.com/ --- 🎧 Royal Astronomical Society Podcast that I co-host: podfollow.com/supermassive --- 🔔 Don't forget to subscribe and click the little bell icon to be notified when I post a new video! --- 👩🏽‍💻 I'm Dr. Becky Smethurst, an astrophysicist at the University of Oxford (Christ Church). I love making videos about science with an unnatural level of enthusiasm. I like to focus on how we know things, not just what we know. And especially, the things we still don't know. If you've ever wondered about something in space and couldn't find an answer online - you can ask me! My day job is to do research into how supermassive black holes can affect the galaxies that they live in. In particular, I look at whether the energy output from the disk of material orbiting around a growing supermassive black hole can stop a galaxy from forming stars. http://drbecky.uk.com