Has the moon changed?

Silly question but it got asked of me one night while looking at it ... I am just a casual observer so I couldn't really answer ..

The full question is ... Does the moon look any different than it did say 100 years ago or even further back as far as large crater impacts that can be seen through the telescope?

I realize that the moon is being bombarded constantly, (I think) but are there any prominent surface changes?

With little atmosphere to protect it the Lunar surface gets smacked quite a bit. I don't know much about major impacts though. NASA has some great material to peruse here - http://www.nasa.gov/worldbook/moon_worldbook.html. Great question. It was my first target as an eclipse back in the mid to late 60's. I would bet most of us went there with our very first scope before most other objects.

Kent

Hi Gary,
The Moon does "weather," but not from water or atmosphere as weathering takes place here on Earth. The Moon is constantly being bombarded by solar radiation and wind, as well as being pelted 24/7 by space dust. It takes a very long time, hundreds of millions or billions of years, but crater rims and mountains can wear down this way. The easiest place to see the effects of lunar weathering is in the lava flows, Mare Imbrium is a good example. Weathering changes the shade of the lava so different shades of lava were laid down at different periods of time.

David E

Gary Barber said:

The full question is ... Does the moon look any different than it did say 100 years ago or even further back as far as large crater impacts that can be seen through the telescope?

I realize that the moon is being bombarded constantly, (I think) but are there any prominent surface changes?

I don't think any features of the Moon have changed in the past 100 years that you could see from Earth with amateur optics. If memory serves, the "youngest" surface features on the moon are at least tens or hundreds of millions of years old.

The "constant" bombardment is solar wind and cosmic radiation, plus micrometeroids I think.