Permanent lunar surface magnetism and its deflection of the solar wind

Aaron Barnes*, Patrick Cassen, J. D. Mihalov, Aharon Eviatar

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

24 Scopus citations

Abstract

Magnetic compressions intermittently observed outside the lunar wake in the solar wind may be limb shocks caused by the presence of local regions of permanent magnetism on the lunar limb. Observable compression would be due to regions of length scale (radius) at least as great as several tens of kilometers and field strength ≳ 10 gammas. Thousands of such regions might exist on the lunar surface. The steady magnetic field measured at the Apollo 12 site probably has length scale ≲ 10 kilometers and probably does not produce an observable limb shock.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)716-718
Number of pages3
JournalScience
Volume172
Issue number3984
DOIs
StatePublished - 1971

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