Discussions as follows: 

At 09:54 AM 12/29/97 -0800, Steve Wingate wrote:

>I was surprised to find this image from Apollo 16 showing numerous anomalies on the lunar farside.

Steve,
As per your last, the URL was corrected to:
http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/apollo/apollo16/hires/as16-121-19407.jpg
Oblique view of rim of Guyot crater on lunar farside as seen by Apollo 16.

I am very interested in the object near the crater rim. At first it looked like a small impact crater with the still-intact impactor on one side of the new rim. But when I went into Printshop with it and blew it up, the object there appears to be unusually tall, enough to cast a good shadow.

>Unfortunately like most of the lunar images scanned by NASA, the image
>quality is very poor due apparently to using a scanner in need of alignment.
>One would think that NASA could afford a decent quality scanner. Or perhaps
>this is intentional, to make it more difficult to identify lunar anomalies.

Still, a pretty good image, Steve.

>Regardless, it is surprising that NASA has posted this image showing several
>possible anomalies from the highly anomalous lunar farside. What else do
>they have lurking in the NASA archives that we have not seen? A lot from what I
>understand.

You need to put some arrows and numbers on each "anomaly" so that, when we discuss each, we'll know what we are referring to. Then, you need to create a new web page for the picture. Is Guyot the larger crater here?

VGL guys, is this the best image of this area? And what do you all think? Too bad this is on the farside. Jon, you said the farside was better, didn't you? Just what you'd expect if somebody was up there. At least that was what Sagan said.

Fran

slk wrote:
>
> Too bad this is on the farside. Jon, you said the farside was better,
> didn't you? Just what you'd expect if somebody was up there. At least that
> was what Sagan said.
>
> Fran
>
Whatcha think Fran? Could the vertical object possibly be a NASA probe? It appears as though the surface to the left has collapsed towards the object -- during insertion perhaps? -- much like sand would do.

Jerry Washington

At 09:54 12/29/1997 -0800, Steve Wingate wrote:
>I was surprised to find this image from Apollo 16 showing numerous anomalies
>on the lunar farside. Notice the violet object in the base of Guyot crater,
>the dark area in the rim to the left and the vertical white object above the
>dark area, and the numerous anomalies, including linear structures, in the
>background to the left.
>
> http://images.jsc.nasa.gov/images/pao/AS16/10075825.JPG
>
>Oblique view of rim of Guyot crater on lunar farside as seen by Apollo 16.
\snip\
>Regardless, it is surprising that NASA has posted this image showing several
>possible anomalies from the highly anomalous lunar farside.

If that light-colored acicular object just below the center of the image, on the inside slope of the crater, is a vehicle, it is one or more orders of magnitude larger than the Saturn launch assembly, and is located in a rather unlikely position. I'd be more likely to guess it's a structure -- it seems to be tall enough to give a clear line of sight past the crater, through a notch in the rim. Some sort of linear surface feature seems to project beyond the clear shadow of this object, collinear with it.

In a message dated 97-12-29 15:04:07 EST, you write:

<< VGL guys, is this the best image of this area? And what do you all think?
 Too bad this is on the farside. Jon, you said the farside was better,
 didn't you? Just what you'd expect if somebody was up there. At least that
 was what Sagan said.   >>

Fran

If anybody has the latitude and Longitude of Guyot I can do a Clem search and see what it shows. It should be fairly close to the Equator on the far side. I will see if my USGS map has the location but it is nowhere near the resolution of Rukl.

Jon

In a message dated 97-12-29 16:16:40 EST, you write:

<< Re: Farside Anomalies in Guyot Crater

 slk wrote:
 >
 > Too bad this is on the farside. Jon, you said the farside was better,
 > didn't you? Just what you'd expect if somebody was up there. At least that
 > was what Sagan said.
 >
 > Fran

I just wanted to warn you guys about the Farside. It is the weirdest place I have seen from a geologic view. Odd shaped craters, Miles of ejecta ropes strung out from the impact of South Pole-Aitken, strange domes and orthogonal structures. There is even a structure that looks for all the world like a giant 15 KM long worm or inflatable habitat. I have pictures of these structures so I am not making this up. There is just not that many NASA images of the Farside so the really only source is Clem.

Jon

Hi Fran, Thanks for getting back to me so promptly.  If you can, please tell me exactly what you are referring to, when you mention "full of,artifacts" in the Moonarrow pic.  Grant you, it is enlarged , but I do not think my method is introducing anything that isn't already there.  Thanks for your help.

Best regards, AL

I just took a look at the web site Steve cited. It's a very interesting photograph. However, I'm not certain about the nature of the "vertical" anomaly because it seems to be aligned with the photograph's vertical edges, which makes me think it might be some sort of streak from the photo
processing. But it sure does look like it's casting a shadow in the right direction given the lighting.

I went to the higher-level FTP directory at the web site and found the text description of the image. The frame number is AS16-121-19407. I think it might be worth ordering the negative from NSSDC. Also, the Apollo astronauts frequently took overlapping photographs, so if the object is real, it might appear in other photographs taken by Apollo 16. I'll check the catalogs to
see if there are other photos.

Happy New Year, everyone.

Lan Fleming

At 10:02 PM 12/30/97 -0500, Lan Fleming of VGL wrote:

>I went to the higher-level FTP directory at the web site and found the text
>description of the image. The frame number is AS16-121-19407. I think it
>might be worth ordering the negative from NSSDC. Also, the Apollo astronauts
>frequently took overlapping photographs, so if the object is real, it might
>appear in other photographs taken by Apollo 16. I'll check the catalogs to
>see if there are other photos.

Hi Lan, Steve, & List Members,

Thanks for the Apollo metric camera image number. I did a little research and found this regarding AS16-121-19407(H):

Farouk El-Baz:
* "This is an oblique view looking northwest at part of the wall of the crater Lobachevsky (not Guyat) on the lunar far side. It shows a small crater on Lobachevsky's wall with unusual streaks of dark material that appeared to have originated from the lower rim of the structure and to have
moved down the floor of Lobachevsky. This feature was first noticed by T. K. Mattingtly, the Apollo 16 CMP, who described the darker streaks as possible lava flows (Mattingtly, El-Baz, and Laidley, 1972). However, the streaks can also be explained by the downslope movement of dark fragmental debris excavated from Lobachevsky's wall by the small crater. Closer to the
lower border of the photograph is a bright area extending across Lobachevsky's rim. This area and other sinuous light-colored markings in the upper half of the photograph are on the periphery of an enormous field of light-colored swirls in this part of the far side (El-Baz, 1972a). The
origin of the swirls is not well understood."

I disagree that the dark material is a lava flow. The location alone would appear to make that an unlikely possibility. And without contrasting shadows on the nw rim, I wonder if the dark area is anything BUT shadows from a taller object. Anyway, NASA was aware of this, but NASA also had the images of Cydonia.

Lan, let's try to get a better image and do a reasonable blow-up with enhancement and see what we get.

Steve, if you'll get this image on a web page, I'll provide the running commentary report text.

Fran

* Source: Page 117, Figure 110, Apollo Over The Moon: A View From Orbit
(NASA SP-362).

Fran wrote: <<Lan, let's try to get a better image and do a reasonable
blow-up with enhancement and see what we get.>>

I'm definitely going to order the photo now, and any others of the region I can find. If El Baz and Mattingly didn't think this feature was a photo defect, then it wasn't. The dark streak certainly looks like the shadow of an upright object. Maybe a good enlargement of the photo could settle that, especially if we can find other photos.

Good work finding El Baz' comments, Fran. Where did you see that?

Lan

PS: Happy New Year to everyone!

At 01:47 AM 1/1/98 -0500, Tom Carey  wrote:

>Well, that URL doesn't work. Backed into the URL stepwise, found an index
>page, and here's one that does (dated 12 Dec 93):

Hi Tom & List Members,

Thanks for the correction, Tom.

BTW, the crater isn't Guyot, but Lobachevski. An earlier email gave the exact coords.

Getting very interesting...

Fran

Hi Tom and Fran,

Whatever [meteorite] formed that little crater on the rim's edger must have impacted at the same angle as that of the rim for the crater to be round. Still, gravity should have pulled the lowere rim of the little crater down a little. That sure looks like a trangular spike sticking up from the lower rim of the little crater. Not saying it's not natural but it would have been in the way of the angle of the meteor strike that created the little crater and seems unnatural due to its location, plus
there is the shadow to support its existence.

Below in the crater, to the right and below the little crater and a few miles into the big crater is a little pale blue, pill shaped detail that I have seen on each of these pictures but that is probably a tiny little crater, except it is pale blue.

Don Ledger R.A. [means Rank Amateur, not Royal Astronomer]

On Thur, 01 Jan 1998 19:18:41, Tom Carey wrote:

>Fran, did this post get lost in space? It hasn't shown up here as yet,
>though later posts by others have. Maybe it's too speculative??? But what a
>catch if it checks out!
>
>Tom

Hi Tom,

We got this earlier this afternoon, but without some of the image data. That's why I reposted it just now. I know where the image came from, but where do you get the support data (text)? Is there an index to more of these farside images?

I have hard copy photos along with the correct Apollo Metric Camera ID numbers in my SP-362 ref. If I had an index to click on from NASA I could get these images to the List without scanning them. I'm curious where Steve got the image if he didn't have something like SP-362.

Fran

Fran <<It mentions the "small crater on Lobachevsky's wall". How far off are
we, coordinates wise? >>

I recall your email saying the coordinates were something like 200 E, 10 N. The caption in the text on the JPL web site said 116.>

Transfer interrupted!

Lan

Tom Carey wrote: <<It's odd that the the associated .txt file would
misidentify the crater... Has El-Baz' corrrection been verified?>>

I noticed that the image coordinates were different, too, from what Fran said. Are we sure El Baz was talking about the same photo?

At 02:28 PM 1/1/98 -0500, Lan Fleming wrote:

>Tom Carey wrote: <<It's odd that the the associated .txt file would
>misidentify the crater... Has El-Baz' corrrection been verified?>>
>
>I noticed that the image coordinates were different, too, from what Fran
>said. Are we sure El Baz was talking about the same photo?

It IS odd, and I was about to respond to Tom's post but had been preoccupied. The NASA source (SP-362) shows the image (AS16-121-19407(H)) with the caption I quoted the other day. It mentions the "small crater on Lobachevsky's wall". How far off are we, coordinates wise? And the other crater, Guyot, how close are the two?

Fran

The blue object is probably not a crater, because the side toward the sun is brighter than the other side. It appears to be an object rising above the crater floor.

Steve

On  1 Jan 98 at 14:16, Don Ledger wrote:

> Below in the crater, to the right and below the little crater and a few
> miles into the big crater is a little pale blue, pill shaped detail that I
> have seen on each of these pictures but that is probably a tiny little
> crater, except it is pale blue.

Fran <<It mentions the "small crater on Lobachevsky's wall". How far off are
we, coordinates wise? >>

I recall your email saying the coordinates were something like 200 E, 10 N. The caption in the text on the JPL web site said 116.5 D, 10.5 N. That's a huge difference.  I'll see if I can check the catalogs tomorrow (if the library's open) so we can clear this up.

Lan

Fran, I went over to LPI yesterday to get more information on AS16-19407. You were right; it is the western wall of Lobaschevsky, not Guyot, and the co-ordinates are 10 N, 111.3 E. Sun elevation 47 degrees. This was a Hasselblad photo shot using SO-368 film.

LPI has a print of the photo in their archives, and from looking at it, it was clear that the "upright" object is not real. It is a bright region on the rim of the small crater. Digitizing images has a tendency to make small features appear to be aligned with the scanning axis, and I think that's what happened here.

However, the black area is real, although it's not a shadow. It appears to be stuff that has oozed out of the small crater on the rim of Lobaschevsky. This really is a strange location for a lava flow. I thought that these occurred mostly on the floors of craters where the surface material has been weakened and thinned by the impact excavation, not on a crater rim where the rock has been piled up by the impact. I don't see how there could be a vent for the lava to escape on the top of a crater rim.

There were no other color Hasselblad photos of the area, but there are some Apollo 16 mapping camera images that probably include the region, although I can't make any promises. Here are the frame numbers and principal points of the mapping camear photos that are most likely to include the anomalous area:

2714 - 7.8N 113.2E
2715 - 7.6N 112.0E
2716 - 7.4N 110.8E
2717 - 7.3N 109.5E
2718 - 7.2N 108.6E

At least one of these mapping camera photos ought to include the same area as the Hasselblad photo. Unfortunately, I can't be sure which, because LPI doesn't have any mapping camera photos on file. I think they are worth ordering from NSSDC, though.

Lan

This farside image is really interesting, but I think we should be cautious because of the obvious artifacts introduced by the JPEG compression. Lots of sharp little lines and angles.

The shadow is certainly no glitch. It is obviously on the surface of the Moon, and it hardly looks like a lava flow or slide of material down the crater wall. It's just too dark.

The "spike" could be the result a really unfortunate compression artifact acting on a different but very real feature on the Moon, but the coincidence of an accompanying shadow is a bit of a long shot. Somewhat reminiscent of the Shard, eh?

I think the Little Blue Pill is interesting too. I think it is unlikely to be a crater simply because the shading is reversed from what would be expected of a crater. The shading should be on the left, as in a concave feature. Instead the shading is on the right, as it would be for a convex feature. It
is the existence of the shading which makes this look like a real feature, not a photo defect. But it still could be.

Lan, I eagerly await any obsevations you have on any copies of this you might find at the LPI. And of course any adjacent frames which might cover the same area.

Thanks for the image, Steve!

 Mike

Thanks, Lan, for your observations on the 'spike' and 'shadow'. I'm a bit surprised to hear the 'shadow' is not really a shadow. This has to be the darkest slide or outflow I've ever seen on the Moon. Is it as dark in the print as it is in the JPEG image? I agree that the location of the 'shadow' is an odd one for an outflow. If such an outflow would have occurred on a crater rim, it would almost certainly have occurred soon after the imact which produced the crater. So why is is still so dark?

Still odd, unless it is much lighter in the print.

BTW, did you also look for the 'pill'?

Mike

At 01:59 PM 1/3/98 -0500, Lan Fleming wrote:

>Fran, I went over to LPI yesterday to get more information on AS16-19407. You
>were right; it is the western wall of Lobaschevsky, not Guyot, and the
>co-ordinates are 10 N, 111.3 E. Sun elevation 47 degrees. This was a
>Hasselblad photo shot using SO-368 film.

That takes care of question #1. I wonder where NASA got Guyot for the caption?

>LPI has a print of the photo in their archives, and from looking at it, it
>was clear that the "upright" object is not real. It is a bright region on the
>rim of the small crater. Digitizing images has a tendency to make small
>features appear to be aligned with the scanning axis, and I think that's what
>happened here.

In any case it would be great to have a good enlargement of that section.

>However, the black area is real, although it's not a shadow. It appears to be
>stuff that has oozed out of the small crater on the rim of Lobaschevsky. This
>really is a strange location for a lava flow. I thought that these occurred
>mostly on the floors of craters where the surface material has been weakened
>and thinned by the impact excavation, not on a crater rim where the rock has
>been piled up by the impact. I don't see how there could be a vent for the
>lava to escape on the top of a crater rim.

It may not be lava at all. Like you said (and I said even earlier) lava is a very unlikely explanation. Not only the location of high on Lobachevsky's rim, but it should have been covered by the lunar dust. I don't remember ever seeing lava that contrasted that much with local terrain, on any lunar
images. Have you?

>There were no other color Hasselblad photos of the area, but there are some
>Apollo 16 mapping camera images that probably include the region, although I
>can't make any promises.

I hope you find some. What about Clementine? Really shooting for the Moon here, huh?

Keep hunting.

Fran

On  3 Jan 98 at 19:18, slk wrote:

> I hope you find some. What about Clementine? Really shooting for the Moon
> here, huh?

The large crater in the large Clementine Browse image is Lobachevsky (or Lobachevskiy, according to the list of targets in the Clementine Navigator, probably a typo; NASA seems to have a rather poor record regarding identification of this crater for some reason):

 http://pdsimage.wr.usgs.gov/CDROMS/cl_3005/browse/large/bi00_35n/bi10n111.htm

The feature in question appears to be at approximately 8:30 on the side of the large crater to the right of the image.

This area appears to be full of anomalies. I will attempt to locate better images of this area from the raw Clementine data.

Steve

Hi Steve, VGL guys, List Members,

Take a look at this, all of you:

 http://www.evansville.net/~slk/lobENL.jpg

This is a 150 dpi scan of just the area of the main anomaly from SP-362 of S16-121-19407(H).

 http://www.evansville.net/~slk/lobENLinv.jpg

This is the same blow-up, but color-inverted so that black is white and white is black.

Mattingly (the Apollo 16 CMP) saw this. El-Baz and Laidley also saw the image later. I can see that the bright area that looked like something standing IS the bright inside edge of the small crater on Lobachevsky's rim. But the dark material is still a mystery.

Fran

Here is a stereo image of the same anomaly from Clementine 950 and 900 nm low gain images of the dark anomaly on the west side of Lobachevsky:

 http://www.anomalous-images.com/3-d/S31_Lobachevsky.gif

Steve

Mike Lomax wrote: <<This has to be the darkest slide or outflow I've ever
seen on the Moon. Is it as dark in the print as it is in the JPEG image?>>

Yes, every bit as dark. I think it's definitely a flow of some sort. In the gif, you can see that the "shadow" appears wider at the base, but what isn't apparent is that this wider area is a small rounded "lobe" as you would expect to see in a pool of spilled liquid spreading out unevenly from the source.

Mike: <<BTW, did you also look for the 'pill'?>>

Um, I forgot about that.  I might make another trip to LPI and take a closer look - that's the bright object with the bluish tint below and to the right of the "shadow", isn't it? In any case, I think I'll order the negative. If it's a real feature, it should be on it and we might be able squeeze a little
more detail out of the image by magnifying the negative.

Lan

Fran wrote: <<That takes care of question #1. I wonder where NASA got Guyot
for the caption?>>

Guyot is a somewhat larger crater to the northeast of Lobachevsky, but not far from it.

Fran: <<It may not be lava at all. Like you said (and I said even earlier)
lava is a very unlikely explanation. Not only the location of high on
Lobachevsky's rim, but it should have been covered by the lunar dust.>>

The flow of whatever the stuff is must have been recent, meaning not billions of years ago. I'm not sure exactly how long it would take dust kicked up from micrometeorite impacts to cover it. The outflow could be something only a few years old, or a few hundred thousand years old. The selenologists would have to answer that, probably.

Steve wrote: <<This area appears to be full of anomalies. I will attempt to
locate better images of this area from the raw Clementine data.>>

Steve, I think your best bet may be the mapping camera images that I listed, although the anomalous area may not be in all of them. With the exception of the Lunar Orbiter hi-res images and the tiny handful of Clementine hi-res images, the best lunar photographs were taken by the Apollo B&W mapping camera. The  color film used by the Apollo Hasselblad was very grainy.
Getting the negatives from NSSDC is kind of expensive ($15 each), but you can also order prints for considerably less.

Lan

 http://www.anomalous-images.com/apollo/apollo.html

Here are some of my comments.

This is a view of the side of Lobachevsky crater as photographed by the Apollo 16 astronauts. Note the dark anomaly in the side of the crater. The bright object is apparently a scanning artifact and does not appear in the photograph. NASA identifies the dark feature as a lava flow. There is also an unusual bluish object to the right of the rim, in the base of the crater. The coordinates of the dark anomaly are 10.0 N latitude, 111.6 E longitude.

These are two stereo images of the anomalous feature in the side of Lobachevsky, from Clementine. Note the cave-like appearance of the feature, which is not completely dark as would be expected with a lava flow. Notice the several linear features which appear to form a bridge from the rim of the crater to the 'island' in the center of the feature. There is also a spherical object at the top of the island, as well as two small dark spots at the base of the 'island', which appears to have a horizontal linear feature just below the two dark spots. Also, note the two bright spots below the dark feature which correspond to the blue objects in the image from Apollo.

The shape of this part of the crater appears to have changed significantly since the Apollo image was taken over 20 years earlier. Could this area have been changed as the result of excavation or mining operations being conducted in the area?

Steve Wingate

Hello Fran and fellow Lunar Slickers,

Being the resident RA [rank amateur] on this list, I'll admit to being ignorant of celestial mechanics but not of flow mechanics. Fran, that little crater on the wall is too round for a low angle impact from the left to right. It looks to me like the meteor came in at an angle from the right but at or near right angles to the crater wall. That would give you the roundness. Otherwise with your angle the crater would be elongated with little walls on the back and sides and a buildup further down the large wall. I'd bet that the buildup was as a result of a second, smaller projectile coming in from the angle you suggest and stiking the bottom of lower wall of the small crater and pitching
fresh,darker debris over the lower rim.

> Or, a very recent  impactor that came more from the left (in the original shot) and threw
> out some dark material >just under the surface. After hitting the smaller crater, which has
>probably been there for many many moons.<G>
>
> Still surprised that there are not more items like this on either the  far or near side.
>
> Fran
Don Ledger

Guys I have been looking at that black streak and my copy of "Geologic Answers for All Anomalies" sez it could only be 3 things:

1. Highly carbonized petroleum oil (just kidding)
2. A highly unusual Obsidian flow (volcanic glass)
3. A deep crack or fissure in the surface

I am leaning toward answer number 3, because the far wall of the opening appears to be sloping toward the black area. That may a trick of light and shadow but while we await higher resolution that is my call.

The blue pill? I have no idea. Anyone have any idea how big that thing is?

Jon
VGL

<<I am leaning toward answer number 3, because the far wall of the opening appears to be sloping toward the black area.>>

In the Clementine image that Steve found - which is very good, byt the way - the black streaks do look like they're following crevices in the surface, so they might just be deep, shadowed cracks. However, the sun angle in the Clem photos is very high, and the bottom surfaces of all but the deepest cracks should be exposed to sunlight and therefore not appear black. I noticed what
appear to be rays extending out from the small crater in the same direction as the black streaks, so those streaks may have something to do with the impact that formed the small crater. But the streaks might also be some sort of liquid that slopped out of the crater long after the impact and just flowed down the path of least resistance (the deepest crevices in the surface of Lobachevsky).

Don Ledger wrote: <<It looks to me like the meteor came in at an angle from
the right but at or near right angles to the crater wall. That would give you
the roundness. Otherwise with your angle the crater would be elongated with
little walls on the back and sides and a buildup further down the large
wall.>>

Craters appear round no matter what the angle is between the impacted surface and the impactor's path, except at very low angles (less than 15 degrees, as I recall). At the low angles, the resulting craters will appear elongated. I was kind of surprised to find this out myself, but it's true. That's why most of the moon's craters appear almost perfectly round even though most
meteoroids don't strike the moon from a vertical direction.

Just a thought, for everyone:

What a coincidence that the vertical artifact is right near the very white inside-crater-wall and right next to a strange dark outflow. Without the dark material there would be no problem. The dark area was confirmed by the Apollo CMP (Command Pilot) and two other geologists on Earth after the mission. Why is the digital artifact, which is actually two, right there?

Fran

At 12:20 1/6/1998 -0600, you wrote:

>What a coincidence that the vertical artifact is right near the very white
>inside-crater-wall and right next to a strange dark outflow. Without the
>dark material there would be no problem. The dark area was confirmed by the
>Apollo CMP (Command Pilot) and two other geologists on Earth after the
>mission. Why is the digital artifact, which is actually two, right there?

Radiating antisunward from the vertical anomaly, there appears to be a faint line across the crater floor, aligned toward the string of three small craters near the brightly lit mound at the right hand edge of the image, and reaching just under half the distance to that mound. A second fainter line
with the same origin and approximate length can be seen approximately 10 degrees clockwise from the first.

These lines may or may not be shadows, but ought to be considered as associated with  the anomaly.

Can it be certain that the small, purplish ovoid spot located about 1-1/2 inch away from the vertical anomaly at about 4:30 is NOT a processing artifact?

Tom Carey

Hi Steve,

Yes, please add me to the list.  I am rewriting the text to properly credit you for your work. Hope to have it done by tomorrow.  Fiebag was gracious in acknowledging that fact.  Your work has further enlightened me on this and I'll probably put a couple of Clementine shots up there as well.

Best,

Jeff

>Jeff,
>
>Yes, Guyot is north of Lobachevsky. If you would like I will put you on my
>updates list. The images we are posting showing possible artifical structures
>on the moon are quite amazing, espcially the stereo and false color images
>made from the Clementine UVVis camera images.
>
>Regards,
>Steve
>
>On  9 Jan 98 at 13:14, eotl@west.net wrote:
>
>> Steve,
>>
>> Thanks for the kind offer...Will try to visit your site and this weekend.
>> Got a note from the people at Lunascan as well.  Why the confusion with
>> Guyot?  Is it an adjacent crater?
>>
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> Jeff

In a message dated 98-01-10 22:46:46 EST, slk@evansville.net writes:

<< My feelings are the small crater has a digital artifact. The crater has a
 very bright or white inside edge, no vertical object. Although lava flows
 are more numerous on the Farside, do you all feel this demonstrates a lava
 flow, or a section of debris thown out by an impactor? And why black or
 dark? Most recent craters have white or bright rays or halos. >>

Lets recap what is known:

Personally I believe the lava or obsidian possibility is the least probable, given what we know about the interior of the Moon. It would have to be a fresh flow to be this black. There is no lava close enough to the surface on the present Moon, even on the farside.

I think we all agree it is not a shadow.

The fact it shows up in various images would indicate it is not an imaging artifact.

What does that leave?

An opening like a grabben, or a collapsed lava tube.

A stain of unknown composition.

Any comments or additions?

Jon Floyd
VGL

On 10 Jan 98 at 20:07, slk wrote:

> The small crater with the "artifact", is that Guyot? The NASA photo says the
> crater Lobachevski, but which crater is NASA refering to?

Fran,

It is just the opposite: NASA caption says the crater is Guyot (north of Lobachevsky), while the crater is definitely Lobachevski. See the page:

 http://www.anomalous-images.com/apollo/lobachevsky.html

which has links to both the Clementine mosaic and a portion of the farside map showing both Lobachevsky and Guyot.  The raw Clementine images from the Clementine Lunar Image Browser are oriented so that south is always toward the top of the image.

> And any idea how
> big each crater is? My feelings are the small crater has a digital artifact.
> The crater has a very bright or white inside edge, no vertical object.
> Although lava flows are more numerous on the Farside, do you all feel this
> demonstrates a lava flow, or a section of debris thown out by an impactor?
> And why black or dark? Most recent craters have white or bright rays or
> halos.

>From the Clementine images it appears that the white artifact is related to
>the very bright 'cap' in the image. See the image:

 http://www.anomalous-images.com/apollo/CS1_Lobachevsky2.jpg

and

 http://www.anomalous-images.com/apollo/32c3.gif

The dark area may be a lava flow; however, the shading, especially at the bottom of the right dark feature appears to show a depression rather than a highly dilineated dark flow. While it is possible that a lava flow is at the bottom of this depression, there is no evidence of this lava flow at the base of the crater. The shadowed area merges gradually into the crater floor, as would be expected from the shading of a crevise or cave.

The false color image with 450 nm mapped to red suggests the possibility of an exposion of matter around the impacting meteor. Could the anomaly be the result of an exposive outburst of gasses created by the impacting meteor?

 http://www.anomalous-images.com/apollo/Lobachevsky2_acb.jpg

Also, here is a Near IR multi-spectral quasi-stereo image of the area which may contain more anomalies (for imaging experts only ;-)

 http://www.anomalous-images.com/apollo/S32_Lobachevsky_nir_abc-acd.jpg

BTW, does anyone have a reference for reflectivity for minerals at the various Clementine filter wavelengths?

Steve Wingate

Fran wrote: <<The small crater with the "artifact", is that Guyot? The NASA
photo says the crater Lobachevski, but which crater is NASA refering to?>>

No, Guyot is a crater larger than Lobachevsky to the northeast. The small crater is probably unnamed.

<<Although lava flows are more numerous on the Farside, do you all feel this
demonstrates a lava flow, or a section of debris thown out by an impactor?>>

In the Clementine images that Steve Wingate found, the dark areas look almost like caverns.

<<Most recent craters have white or bright rays or halos.>>

There did seem to be rays extending from the small crater down the rim of Lobachevsky in the print at LPI that I looked at. I also thought I saw some in the Clementine images. I've already ordered the negative from NSSDC plus some mapping-camera photos, so I may be able to provide some additional images of the area for you in about 4 weeks. I think I should be able to do a better job of scanning with my slide scanner than they did with the image on
the JSC web site.

Someone asked about the size of the Lobachevsky anomaly. Using the Clementine image, luc3894k_127.gif, and the pixel scale of 143 m/pixel, the anomaly is approximately 1430 m wide and 2145 m from the base to the the upper part of the dark region. The white cap, which is the source of the jpg artifacts in the NASA image, is approx. 290 m in height and 570 m wide at
the base.

Steve

In a message dated 1/10/98 7:46:46 PM, slk@evansville.net wrote:

<<Do any of you feel we have enough on Lobachevsky/Guyot to make any kind of
statement. I don't want to rush anyone, especially since we're still
concerned about certain aspects (dark area for one), but we need to move as
fast as we can to prevent anyone from exploiting this particular
investigation. >>

Hi Fran,

The attached image shows some things that I think are pretty interesting.  I agree with everyone that the darkest area is not a shadow of the bright thing, but I think part of the dark area could be.  I have marked this area with blue.  The bright thing is marked with yellow and appears to have two barbs sticking out from it.  Something I don't think anyone has discussed is the
feature I have marked with red.

The enhancement I did is nothing more than increasing the image size and doubling the pixels from 72 dpi to 150 dpi.  The red feature I marked is visible in the image I started out with which is the one from the NASA site. I think Lan said that he was going to get the negative for this image.  If he does, we may be able to determine if the area I have marked as a shadow is one or not.  I think it fits more with the sun angle, which I think is fairly high.  We should also be able to determine a Penumbra shadow and a Umbra shadow, if the negative is good enough.

I kinda rushed through this, so I apologize if I'm being sloppy.  But I just wanted everyone to take a look at this before it was too late.

Bill

Attachment Converted: "c:\0\Lobach.jpg"

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