Hello all,

I'm working on an art project involving lunar images and it occurs to me that it would be fun to incorporate the location of the lunar Monolith from Kubrick's 2001. The film makes clear that the Monolith was found (buried) in Tycho and they show the actors holding print outs of photographs of the lunar surface. There are also readouts and other possible clues in the film to the location, although I suspect the readouts are just gibberish. The photo, however, knowing Kubrick's filming style and the effort put into the film to make it scientifically accurate (within limits, of course), might be a real indication that they had an actual location in mind.

So...before I dive into this and spend hours and hours on it (which I am happy to do!)--has anyone already done this--identified where in Tycho the Monolith was found?

Thanks!

--Darin

The photos were somewhat inconsistent - they showed different locations. The clearest one of the crater showed the center of the contour lines to be almost due southwest from the central peak, about halfway between the peak and crater rim.

Dr. Halvorsen traces the entire Tycho crater rim with his finger and says, "We excavated around it on all sides..." Must have been one heck of an excavation!

I've uploaded screen grabs of the three best views:
Context photo of Tycho quadrant
Tycho with TMA-1 circled
Tycho with contour lines