Something strange was occurring on the Moon
TLP’s are the short-lived changes in brightness in areas on the surface of the moon, appearing as quick bright flashes, with some lasting seconds and some lasting for hours!
These changes can also be of varying colours such as flashes of red or violet and some have even been recorded as ‘darkening’s.’
These occurrences also have sometimes been describe as a haze rather than flash of light. Now, any occurrence of light on or near the Moon’s surface whose origin is not know is referred to as a TLP.
As NASA geared up to land on the moon, reports of TLPs intensified.
What did NASA think?
The first serious attempt to understand TLPs was made by NASA before the Apollo 11 mission. They catalogued 579 lunar events from 1940 until 1967, one year before Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin put their feet on its surface.
NASA did not give much publicity or exposure to the seemingly random, unidentified, and potentially hazardous flashes appearing on the moon. As this before the Apollo missions, they had a fear of the programme being cancelled due to the unexplained mystery.
NASA however remained interested in finding out more about them, which they did in a secretive and hushed manner. Most of NASAs research on the subject oddly remains classified still.
Lights on the moon were being seen so regularly that NASA also started a further more public study, called Operation Moonblink, to investigate them.
NASA commissioned observatories from around the world to just watch and photograph the moon. Within months there were more than twenty-eight documented mysterious lunar events. Several of these events were confirmed by astronomers outside the program.
Photographs of these events remain classified, and have never been released to the public. Why?
Why were the flashes clustered?
An interesting fact that was discovered when 579 official TLPs were recorded – almost 40% of them were observed in the vicinity of Aristarchus crater on the north-west part of the Moon’s near side.
Strangely, it is this crater that has also been reported by NASA as having strange surface markings.
The sightings of these strange flashes peaked in the 1970’s – but stopped at about the same time NASA stopped visiting the moon.