Thoughts by WildVke
I think the thing people are calling the Lunar Wave has something to do with the atmosphere and or the plasma sheet of the moon going through the earths magnetotail, (we travel through it once a month, when the moon is full).
It's some type of electrostatic discharge (plasma) across the moons surface. Either directly associated with the magnetotail or both magnetotail and solar winds.
Energy is needed to strip electrons from atoms to make plasma. The energy can be of various origins: thermal, electrical, or light (ultraviolet light or intense visible light from a laser). With insufficient sustaining power, plasmas recombine into neutral gas.
I also think that this would explain the other phenomena that happens prior to the lunar wave. The displacement of features. Because the plasma sheet is essentially light, it would displace the view because it is miles above the moon. ( The initial charging of the plasma sheet over the moon as the moon gets closer to the magnetotail, within the proximity, the wave starts) similar to what happens on earth with the auroras. Once the wave goes across the surface, the energy collected is released, we are then "inside" the magnetotail and it can no longer do it again until the atmosphere charges again ( by the solar wind) and we come back to it again the next month or next full moon.
Moons atmosphere: What is the moon's atmosphere made of? The Apollo 17 mission deployed an instrument called the Lunar Atmospheric Composition Experiment (LACE) on the moon's surface. It detected small amounts of a number of atoms and molecules including helium, argon, and possibly neon, ammonia, methane and carbon dioxide.
Ref link~ https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LADEE/news/lunar-atmosphere.html#.V0k2-pA8KrU
Quotes > If the moon is full, it is inside the magnetotail,” says Stubbs. “The moon enters the magnetotail three days before it is full and takes about six days to cross and exit on the other side.”
Earth’s magnetotail isn’t the only source of plasma to charge the moon. Solar wind can provide charged particles, too; indeed, most of the time, the solar wind is the primary source. But when the moon enters the magnetotail, the solar wind is pushed back and the plasma sheet takes over. The plasma sheet is about 10 times hotter than the solar wind and that gives it more "punch" when it comes to altering the charge balance of the moon's surface. Two million degree electrons in the plasma sheet race around like crazy and many of them hit the moon's surface. Solar wind electrons are relatively cool at only 140 thousand degrees, and fewer of them zip all the way down to the shadowed surface of the moon's nightside.
Ref link; http://www.nasa.gov/topics/moonmars/features/magnetotail_080416.html
Substorms and earths magnetotail.
http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a010100/a010104/index.html
