WASHINGTON: Astronomers have found the coldest spot in our solar system and it may be a little close for comfort. It is on our moon.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa), while making the first-ever temperature map of the moon, found that at the moon's south pole, there are areas colder than far away Pluto. These are located inside craters that are permanently shadowed so they never see sun.

The information was received from Nasa's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which was launched two months ago.

Its mission is to produce the most detailed map of the moon ever and, also in large part, to find evidence of water as well as potential sites for human colonies.

One of the instruments aboard the orbiter, the Diviner Lunar Radiometer Experiment, is making the first global survey of the temperature of the lunar surface. It recorded minimum daytime brightness temperatures in portions of these craters.

Some of the coldest temperatures in the solar system were measured in a crater called Faustini, with the thermometer showing -238 deg C, slightly chillier than what has been found on Pluto.

'After decades of speculation, Diviner has given us the first confirmation that these strange, permanently dark and extremely cold places actually exist on our moon,' said science team member Ashwin Vasavada from Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. 'Their presence greatly increases the likelihood that water or other compounds are frozen there.'

If water were to be found on the moon, future colonists could use it to produce oxygen as well as to make rocket fuel for a later trip to Mars.

ASSOCIATED PRESS, LOS ANGELES TIMES