Hey, everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday. We sure did! After the Miami Book Fair we stayed on with family who live in Homestead and spent the holiday with them. At one point I got to take my 10″ Dobsonian telescope out to Flamingo in the Everglades where the skies are really dark. Andromeda Galaxy, Orion’s Nebula, the Double Cluster of Perseus, and many other favorites were astonishing out there. I also saw many new objects I can’t see near home so it was a great night! (The mosquitoes were not quite so horrific either.) All that got me thinking about astronomy, and hence today’s post. But first a shout out to all my new subscribers. Welcome aboard and feel free to share this with interested friends!

Friday night I went out to gaze at the Moon with my 90 ETX. It was Day 5 in the lunar cycle and I immediately noticed that the pyramids were visible. Using my cellphone held up to the eyepiece I snapped a few photos. Not the best method, I’ll grant, but I’m mainly a visual observer and it was the best I could do.

In this low power shot you can follow the finger of land in the center (just at the edge of the dark) upward and you will see a long mountain, and behind it some small mountains. Those are the pyramids. (It actually looks much more vivid in the eyepiece.)

This shot is a little closer. There’s only so much I can do with the 90mm scope (3.5 inch), so the next night I decided to bring out the big scope. The orientation is different in the reflector, but you can see them just the same.

Last night (Saturday) I brought out the 10″ reflector which usually brings out more detail, but the air was very unsteady. (Notice how the shadow of the terminator has moved away some.) The finger of land is now pointing to the left. (It’s actual name is Promontorium Archerusia.) You can still see them in this low power shot.

I tried for a close-up, but the air was pretty unstable. I remembered I had some older photos I took with the 10″ Dob so I went back and found them. The air was a little better that time, but they still look much more defined in the eyepiece. It looks like these were also from Day 5.

I think the last one is as good as I could get, which isn’t very good. I first discovered these pyramid shaped mountains last year while exploring with my 90 ETX. They stood out so distinctly that I wondered why they were never named on any of the charts. Sometimes they don’t even appear on the charts. I found an old US Air Force chart from 1966 online and they were clearly represented, but now they are not. The picture below is from Celestron’s Observers Map of the Moon and you can barely make them out if you know what to look for.

The next one is from Anton Rukl’s Field Map of the Moon. It’s an excellently drawn chart, but the pyramids don’t even show up. And this is an wonderful chart with almost 1000 features labelled, some much smaller than this. What’s going on?

Next I tried to find if there were any Moon probe photos that might show them. I found the Digital Lunar Orbiter Photographic Atlas of the Moon on the Lunar and Planetary Institute’s website. (https://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/lunar_orbiter/bin/lst_nam.shtml?A) Low and behold I found a photo and it even had labels! The pyramid mountains are clearly seen at the bottom.

I also noticed on the charts and photos that this was the very site where Apollo 17 landed, which intrigued me. I wondered why they chose that spot to land. Could it be because of the “pyramids?” I got online and found some surface photos from that mission. Except for the ridge at the top, the pyramid shape is clearly seen from the surface.

Okay, they are probably just natural mountains that are pyramid-shaped and lined up in a row with matching angles. But why did Apollo 17 want to land there? And why do they not show up on the modern charts? (Many other more obscure objects are indicated on the charts.) And why does history tell us that Apollo 17 landed at “Taurus-Littrow” when they landed closer to Mons Vitruvius than Crater Littrow, and the Taurus Mountains are not even in the Lunar Orbiter photo? (They are a long way off.) Recently we went to the McDonald Observatory in Ft. Davis, Texas, where they, among other things, shoot a laser at the reflectors the Apollo astronauts left on the Moon to measure the distance. (That visit will be in another post.) I talked to 2 astronomers there and they didn’t know anything about it, though one said he thought it was a geological intrusion of some kind (basalt?). I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but I find the facts interesting, like the “face” on Mars, etc. I found another strange mountain in the Montes Appeninus range which looks like an elongated pyramid, but it too never shows up on any of the charts. Even the images from LPI didn’t label it, though it is right next to Mons Wolff. You can see it clearly in the upper left hand corner.

I had to dig around online some more, and was finally rewarded with a name on a chart. Here it is labelled Mons Serao. The shape is undeniable.

Maybe it’s nothing, or a trick of the light, but Serao and the pyramids of Vitruvius caught my eye and I wasn’t even looking for them. I guess we all need a little mystery in our lives. And if my wife reads this she may better understand why I sit out in the cold (or in the bugs) and stare through an eyepiece for hours. There is a lot of mystery and beauty out there in the universe! Also I find a lot of inspiration for writing my science fiction novels. Mars will be coming up big in January and I’m looking forward to it.

I guess that’s about all for now. If the Men in Black show up and shut my site down, you’ll know I was onto something. If not, I’ll post again real soon. Good night everyone, and keep looking up! – James

Novels by James Crawford (available in print, eBook, and audio book) –

Mariner Valley – https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0141N9UXO

Seed of Aldebaran – https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08SHXTRMP

AlCent Sagas Book One: Formation – https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CQ5C3TQT

AlCent Sagas Book Two: Revelation – https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D2FRH6Q8

AlCent Sagas Book Three: Investigation – https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D5SBFYMW

AlCent Sagas Book Four: Desperation – https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D8767LHL

AlCent Sagas Book Five: Confrontation – https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D9PPTX6G

A Noble Paradise – https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00QG6LZ10

Cover artist Wojtek Kapusta – https://www.artstation.com/kapucha76

Audible narrator Lyle Blaker – https://www.acx.com/narrator?p=AXZPXFQRN07M3

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