Figure 1 Analysis

This photo originally caught my eye in the source material because of the dark shadow near the bottom of the frame. Relating this to the "louvered blind" effect originally noted by Hoagland (Martian Horizons, The Journal of The Mars Mission, Vol.2, No.5), I examined the frame more closely. The sky above the Lunar surface shows several faint objects of interest, which seem to be reflecting light. The three craters across the lower middle of the photo also seem unusually similar in shape, size and depth, and their placement could be along a curving path following the contour of the Lunar surface. In addition, the sun angle shown in the shadow of the craters would seem to be too high to account for the deep shadow effect.

The .PCX file provided to me by the author of the source material (and shown on the full size Figure 1 page) revealed considerably more detail than the published version. There are numerous bright objects in the sky, many of which are consistent on a preliminary basis with observations made by Hoagland on various frames. There also appear to be some anomalous objects scattered about the Lunar surface. Certainly, a lot of these seem to be scratches or dust particles on the print, but detailed analysis of the NSSDC data will hopefully resolve many of these issues. To be sure, this frame has many features worth examining more closely.