Starship Asterisk*

The 40 years old picture of today shows the Copernicus crater. link
What is the formation standing like a chess piece on the horizon slightly to the right of the crater centre? It must be enormous and has an unlikely shape.

Greetings
gorade

Hi Gorade,

I agree it's a pretty remarkable picture; makes one appreciate how rough terrain can be in the absence of wind and water erosion.

If I am correct in identifying the feature that you cite, I would guess that it is probably an artifact. Bear in mind that we are talking about 40 year old technology supplied by the lowest bidder.

Its in the film then?. Yes looking thoroughly in the foreground there are some similar shapes, but smaller. At first glance I came to think of a shot story by Arthur C. Clarke: "The sentinel". However that one was in Mare Crisium, quite far off to say.

Thank you for answering.
gorade

I was thinking it was the AFLAC duck on vacation

"It's just a glitch in the film." Thats the first cop out of those that don't know and don't want you to research deeper into what it could be.

Just a thought based on experiance.

Maybe the energizer bunny?

Possibly the "soul" receptor tower?

maybe it is a marker for the "Obelisk"

OK. Thank you all! AFLAC duck is a thrilling theory and so is Energizer bunny, but after all I lean towards "a glitch in the film" as the most probable however trivial explanation. No big sensation this time either.

Best regards
gorade

I just looked up some info on the Lunar Orbiter program. The camera system was a little complicated. The exposures were taken on film, the film was developed onboard, then fed across a scanner to digitize the image for transmission. The film was also moved to keep the image steady as the spacecraft moved.

So artifacts could potentially result from the exposure, the film handling, the scanning or the transmission.

I noticed the spot is dissimilarly white from the rest of the picture, and the top of it lines up with one of the many faint horizontal streaks that are visible in the dark portions of the image. I'd guess it's related to whatever caused those, and their apparently perfect horizontal alignment suggests to me they were from the scanning process.

Of course, based on the shape alone, it also has a bit of an interesting resemblance to sasquatch...

I would really miss this site if it were to go away. I can't say I've been there since the beginning but I haven't missed a day for at least 10 years!

Keep up the great site!

Francois
Montreal