oldest Place in Solar System: Our Moon
June 18, 2009 -- Astronomers have found the coldest spot in our solar system and it may be a little close for comfort. It's on our moon, right nearby. NASA's new Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is making the first complete temperature map of the moon. It found that at the moon's south pole, it's colder than far away Pluto. The area is inside craters that are permanently shadowed so they never see sun.
"It's sort of like a faint glow and that's your only source of heat," said David Paige, a University of California, Los Angeles, scientist who is part of the NASA team. "Right here in our own backyard are definitely the coldest things we've seen in real measurements."
Temperatures there were measured at 397 degrees below zero. That's just 62 degrees higher than the lowest temperature possible.
Pluto is at least a degree warmer even though it is about 40 times farther away from the sun.
The coldest temperatures on the moon were usually in craters that were within bigger craters, hiding farther from the sun, Paige said. Three craters where the cold temperatures were noted were Faustini, Shoemaker and Haworth. And some of the coldest places are so remote and unexplored they don't even have names yet, he said.
Soon, the moon's south pole will slightly warm up with the change of seasons and the north pole will get chillier, he said.
