When the full moon shines in the night sky, it's easy to see the varied landscapes and vast craters on its surface. But not every crater on the moon is visible to the naked eye; there are some parts we never see at all.

Now, a team of researchers has used UV light to see the "dark" side of the moon, and they found something rather surprising.

The moon has two craters that are much newer that astronomers expected, the . Using the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter's Lyman Alpha Mapping Project (LAMP), researchers were able to see the "fresh" craters in the permanently shaded regions of the moon.

“These ‘young’ impact craters are ,” Southwest Research Institute senior research scientist Dr. Kathleen Mandt, one of the study's authors, said in a statement. “Finding geologically young craters and honing in on their age helps us understand the collision history in the solar system.”

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The crater on the right is 16 million years old, while the crater on the left is significantly older. (Albedo map credit: NASA GSFC/SwRI; Topographic map credit: NASA GSFC/ASU Jmoon)

The craters date back 16 million years and somewhere between 72 and 420 million years, respectively. They're found in the Faustini and Slater craters, both billions of years old. The older of the two would have been created by an impact while dinosaurs still roamed the earth; the younger of the two would have happened about the same time kangaroos started appearing on the fossil record.

The permanently shaded parts of the moon are of particular interest to researchers because "," Cosmos Magazine reports.

Researchers were able to date the new craters by measuring their brightness: younger craters haven't been weathered as much and are more reflective of UV light.

Looking at the moon and its pockmarked surface gives more insight into the history of Earth's satellite. Now, this new method of observing obscured regions can help illuminate other bodies in our solar system as well.

“Discovering these two craters and a new way to detect young craters in the most mysterious regions of the moon is particularly exciting," Mandt said. “This method will be useful not only on the moon, but also on other interesting bodies, including Mercury, the dwarf planet Ceres, and the asteroid Vesta.”

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