M1311886645LC with possible high points marked.

M1311886645LC is 0.71 m/pixel.

Hi Phil,

I kind of like the image M1311886645LC. It seems clearer. I think I see some rocks. Not at the crater you refer to but "left" of it. Usually this area has images that show few rocks.

James

I do not understand how you can see it is "clearly visible". For one thing, do we know where the antenna is? Is it on its side to cast a thick shadow or what?

I would need to calculate the length of the flag shadow (not including the pole) for the shallowest sun elevation images to confirm this is likely a flag shadow. It did not jump out at me at the time as being obvious, but maybe I was wrong.

Hello GoneToPlaid,

You mean Crater Osama (not Obama right? http://bit.ly/2o4h6QA

There are lots of places on the Moon that have obvious boulders or rocks that are shed (and I really think Ina features are great, by the way!). But the problem is that they are obvious. Same for the boulder tracks. You can see that the boulders rolled from the top of the crater to the floor, regardless of whether they bounced, skipped, slid, wobbled or just plain rolled.

What I would like to see is more such blocks with no apparent origin. Something like this http://bit.ly/2o4osUg in Crater Vertregt K, although it is not quire "there" yet.

The length of the long object is 64 m. The shorter is 40 m. They are about 15 m wide

Hello GoneToPlaid! Good to hear from you!

Thanks for your desire to credit me with finding this peculiar feature, however, I must correct the record in that I merely heard about it on some podcast and then googled it to find that others have investigated it (Google pointe dme to someplace called the Lunascan project). I realized that the Unmanned Spaceflight forum has a high level of lunar expertise so was hoping to obtain some scientific conjecture on the blocks. I can say I was not disappointed.

However, even with the conjectures presented here so far (although they are interesting and educational), I still am not completely convinced due to the one-off nature of the blocks. This is like Tabby's Star in a way. If we could find others that are just like it, it would help a lot in explaining it definitively.

I used Quickmap to measure the distance from the slabs to the leftwise crater and it is only 500 m to the center of it. It is about 500 m diameter.

Being a neophyte I would have thought that the erosion of that crater would be matched by the erosion of the presumed slabs ejected from it. That looks like a lot of crater erosion to me!
But the slabs appear sharply defined.

Thanks for your suggestions!

I am no lunar scientist but I would have preferred an explanation of either:

1) a boulder that rolled to that spot (since it is at the base of the crater slope) and dust accumulated enough (!!) to cover the tracks or

2) low speed ejecta from elsewhere that landed the block (which broke upon impact) and somehow did not create a crater (like Gerald's suggestion except I cannot see the 1 km west impact that
he says might have caused it, I was expecting something much farther away).

Also, I would like to see examples of similar occurrences elsewhere on the Moon.

I do see a number of spots with very entertaining slabs at the bottom of the crater. For instance, here are a lot of slabs in Giordano Bruno.
http://bit.ly/2mgWnWH

[quote name='Phil Stooke' date='Feb 21 2017, 07:23 PM' post='234703']
Another Apollo LM ascent stage? I think so. I believe this is the Apollo 15 ascent stage impact site. Later I will post something showing exactly where this is. The images are enlarged from the original scale.



I don't know how you do this! I can't discern the difference between this and any other old impactor. I guess it just takes a trained eye.

By the way, any opinion of this blocky thing in Paracelsus C others have found? Simplified link to QuickMap.

http://bit.ly/2ljHDYT

Maybe it is just a blocky thing, but I would like it if there were a lot more blocky things in the area which there are not.

"APOLLO MISSION 12, TRAJECTORY RECONSTRUCTION AND POSTFLIGHT ANALYSIS VOLUME 1"
An excerpt:
"The rev 34 (deorbit) trajectory for the LM was reconstructed from MSFN doppler data from RID (Madrid, 2-way), MIL, ACN (100 observations pre-burn and 159 observations post-burn), 5 SXT shaft angles, 2 SXT trunnion angles, 7 VHF ranging points, and the thrust profile of the deorbit burn obtained from IMU accelerometer data.

The converged residual statistics for all of the observations used in the fit are as follows:
No. OBS. Station Type Mean Sigma
86 RID MSFN .348 cps 1.404 cps
87 MIL MSFN .235 cps 1.416 cps
86 ACN MSFN .342 cps 1.356 cps
5 CSM SXT Shaft .001 deg .019 deg
2 CSM SXT Trunnion .033 deg .128 deg
7 CSM VHF Range -470 ft 506 ft

The accumulated thrust velocities in IMU platform coordinates due to the deorbit burn are:
Delta Vx = -188.57 ft/sec
Delta Vy = 54.15 ft/sec
Delta Vz = -6.21 ft/sec

The time of impact is estimated to be 149:55:16.46 GET. The selenographic coordinates of the impact point are:
LATITUDE = -3.944 deg
LONGITUDE -21.196 deg
RADIUS = 5697847 ft
Selenographic Orbit Inclination = -14.531 deg
Relative Velocity Magnitude = 5517.2 ft/sec
Relative Flight Path Angle = 3.717 deg"

Two images from the report offer a little more data. The one shows the above mentioned 7 VHF range data points from the CSM to the LM.

I had forgotten about those impacts.


Its interesting how the chart on this link (http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4029/Apollo_18-29_LM_Lunar_Impact.htm) makes it seem that the location is _so_ precise. Also, an estimated crater diameter (29.9 ft... that's to the tenth of a foot!). One Apollo 12 report says the lunar radius at impact was 5,697,847 ft. Pretty accurate! They say -3.944 deg by -21.196 deg. Again with the accuracy! (from pg 5-34 of Apollo Mission 12, Trajectory Reconstruction and Post-flight Analysis Volume 1). Elsewhere I saw the mass at impact was supposed to be 5254 lbs.

Perhaps the use of topographic maps could help see what may be going on. If the height was different than they thought maybe it would hit earlier or later.

Thanks, Phil.

Yes, I, of course, noticed those frames too during my work on this. My original assessment was that more work was needed (since it was not so clear cut as the three I was sure about) and I couldn't understand the shadows being shown without more modeling/analysis. Eric Jones and I went back and forth about this a lot. If someone in the audience wants to offer a model (i.e. 3D) for the shadow casting for these frames, then we would welcome it. It is baffling. You idea might work but I have not had the time to test it and other theories.

Apollo Lunar Surface Journal on Apollo Flags as seen by LRO.

Hope you don't mind tooting my own horn, but I am pleased to be able to post something in the "nasa.gov" domain (it wasn't easy) on something I hope some people find of interest. See following link:
Apollo Lunar Surface Journal Apollo Flags Link

Apollo Lunar Surface Journal on Apollo Flags as seen by LRO.

This link is to this page:
Apollo Lunar Surface Journal Apollo Flags Link

Excellent find Dr. Stooke! They looked like plateaus to me until I looked at another image M142570512. On second thought, I am having trouble visualizing them again. Are these plateaus or indentations? The craters around them indicate indentations, but then the mind wants them to be plateaus. Odd.

Those are quite interesting and different. May I ask you how you handle discoveries of this type? In peer review science, it seems a long process before such discoveries are released via expensive journals. There does not seem to be an international lunar feature registry to post the discovery to (correct me if I am wrong). I mean, its nice to be recognized for the discovery since it takes alot of time or luck or both to find something. Do you feel that by posting to a site like this one, then this is good enough for priority? At MoonZoo for instance most posters seem anonymous which I find odd since I thought they might want some credit for a finding/discovery.

Phil,
Is this your discovery? Did you read the paper “Lunar Caves In Mare Deposits Imaged By The LROC Narrow Angle Cameras” to be presented at the First International Planetary Cave Research Workshop? http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/caves2011/pdf/program.pdf
They say they have documented >140 "negative relief" features. I have sent in an inquiry to Mark Robinson as to either the location of these or the general regions. They also include an image of the cave/pit H1 I found back in April. Although I got no attribution, perhaps they found it independently.
James

Looks like the data is in!
http://lroc.sese.asu.edu/data/LRO-L-LROC-3....0/LROLRC_0007/

Thanks. Yes, I was surprised to be the first to do that (i.e. show the flags are casting shadows on their poles as depicted by animation). So often one finds out one is third (or further back) when doing anything.

Note, Apollo 14's flag can't but examined this way due to poor location of the flag and Apollo 15 doesn’t have an obvious flag shadow cast although it is in a position to be able to cast shadows that can be seen (it's pole or the flag fabric might have been knocked down). And Apollo 11's flag is, of course, down too.

Glad you liked the flag pole/flag animations, they were interesting to do.

Another interesting LRO striated rock/boulder image from the Moonzoo site.



Location: Aristarchus.
Latitude: 24.2409°
Longitude: 312.927°
Sun Angle: -55.76°
Scale: 0.51 meters / pixel

http://wms.lroc.asu.edu/lroc/view_lroc/LRO....0/M111904494RE
http://forum.moonzoo.org/index.php?topic=195.msg6006#msg6006

Theorizing on the website was that it was due to volcanic eruptions.

An interesting site I had not heard about is called Moonzoo (http://www.moonzoo.org/) which seems to have the public look for interesting things in LRO images. Any other similar sites out there? Be nice if the LRO folk sponsored or had such a site.

One interesting type of image is introduced there... http://forum.moonzoo.org/index.php?topic=269.0

Specifically it is called "boulder repellent" and is an odd aspect of a flat area at the bottom of a boulder strewn crater. Pretty weird in my book. Looks almost faked.

Sorry about the repeats. Something wrong with the server I think.

This is the Marius Hills lunar pit/cave/lava tube image I found on July 16 but which was posted September 14 at the ASU website:
http://lroc.sese.asu.edu/news/index.php?/a...Lunar-Pits.html



http://wms.lroc.asu.edu/lroc/view_lroc/LRO....0/M122584310LC

In the latest batch of images from last week, they apparently captured a slant image of the same cave. From:
http://lroc.sese.asu.edu/news/?archives/25...it-Craters.html
"The LROC team will acquire images at a slant attempting to look for overhangs that might indicate the lava tubes are still open and accessible."



http://wms.lroc.asu.edu/lroc/view_lroc/LRO....0/M137929856RC

Here we can see the wall of the cave and a peak under the overhang.

Thanks to Robert Zimmerman for getting me to correctly interpret this image.
http://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black...to-a-lunar-cave

That's funny but you are right!