An Unprecedented Constraint on Water Content in the Sunlit Lunar Exosphere Seen by Lunar-Based Ultraviolet Telescope of Chang'e-3 Mission

TL;DR

This study provides the most stringent upper limit to date on water-related molecules in the Moon's exosphere using lunar-based ultraviolet observations, significantly refining previous estimates and aligning with sputtering models.

Contribution

It presents the first in-situ upper limit measurement of OH radicals in the lunar exosphere using the Chang'e-3 UV telescope, improving constraints by two orders of magnitude.

Findings

Upper limit of OH radicals is <10^{11} cm^{-2}

Surface concentration of OH is <10^{4} cm^{-3}

Surface concentration of neutral magnesium is <10^{2} cm^{-3}

Abstract

The content of $\mathrm{OH/H_2O}$ molecules in the tenuous exosphere of the Moon is still an open issue at present. We here report an unprecedented upper limit of the content of the OH radicals, which is obtained from the in-situ measurements carried out \rm by the Lunar-based Ultraviolet Telescope, a payload of Chinese Chang'e-3 mission. By analyzing the diffuse background in the images taken by the telescope, the column density and surface concentration of the OH radicals are inferred to be $<10^{11}\ \mathrm{cm^{-2}}$ and $<10^{4}\ \mathrm{cm^{-3}}$ (by assuming a hydrostatic equilibrium with a scale height of 100km), respectively, by assuming that the recorded background is fully contributed by their resonance fluorescence emission. The resulted concentration is lower than the previously reported value by about two orders of magnitude, and is close to the prediction of the sputtering model. In addition, the same measurements and method allow us to derive a surface concentration of $<10^{2}\ \mathrm{cm^{-3}}$ for the neutral magnesium, which is lower than the previously reported upper limit by about two orders of magnitude. These results are the best known of the OH (MgI) content in the lunar exosphere to date.