Astronomy from the Moon

The Astrophysics Enabled By the Return to the Moon Workshop is on right now at the Space Telescope Science Institute.

It is webcast (link above).

The program looks reasonably interesting, meetings like this have been held before, and the issues look to tbe much the same.

You can do astronomy from the Moon. Some of it would be sensible, if expensive, to do from the Moon.
Some might even be uniquely doable on the Moon. Some should be done from the Moon if it so happens that there is activity taking place there. Might as well give folks something interesting to do.

I ran a mission concept by people, which could be done from the Moon: a small (Spitzer-ish sized) wide angle rapid slew infra-red telescope doing a synoptic sky survey and transient monitoring (ie high redshift gamma-ray bursts). Bigger mirror would be better, but not really feasible as a first try.

The catch though is simple. NASA Exploration wants science concepts for tasks to do on the Moon when they get there. The funding would come out of the Science Directorate. And as of now this would not be new money it would be taken away from existing or currently planned missions.
That is not good.

So... if we are to do real new science from the Moon we can. But if it is to be done it ought to be funded, not cut out of other projects. None of the projects I've heard proposed are that good.