Transient lunar phenomenon
Nevertheless, the majority of transient lunar phenomenon reports are irreproducible and do not possess adequate control experiments that could be used to distinguish among alternative hypotheses to explain their origins.
These gaseous events are purported to display a distinctive reddish hue, while others have appeared as white clouds or an indistinct haze.
The majority of TLPs appear to be associated with floor-fractured craters, the edges of lunar maria, or in other locations linked by geologists with volcanic activity.
In support of explosive outgassing, it has been suggested that a roughly 3 km (1.9 mi) diameter region of the lunar surface was "recently" modified by a gas release event.
[citation needed] It has been suggested that effects related to either electrostatic charging or discharging might be able to account for some of the transient lunar phenomena.
One possibility is that electrodynamic effects related to the fracturing of near-surface materials could charge any gases that might be present, such as implanted solar wind or radiogenic daughter products.
Alternatively, it has been proposed that the triboelectric charging of particles within a gas-borne dust cloud could give rise to electrostatic discharges visible from Earth.
The Earth's atmosphere can give rise to significant temporal distortions that could be confused with actual lunar phenomena (an effect known as astronomical seeing).
One attempt to overcome the above problems with transient phenomena reports was made during the Clementine mission by a network of amateur astronomers.
By documenting the appearance of these features under the same illumination and libration conditions, it is possible to judge whether some reports were simply due to a misinterpretation of what the observer regarded as an abnormality.
