De Forest crater structures

De Forest is a crater some fifty-six kilometres across on the far side of the Moon, deep enough into the southern hemisphere that the Sun never climbs high over it. According to the accounts the archive holds, Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter imagery of the crater shows terracing that resembles an open-cut mine, a wishbone-shaped structure about half the height of the Eiffel Tower, and four aligned conical or pyramidal forms the height of small skyscrapers. The second telling returns to the same wishbone tower, adds a row of spires put at fractions of the Eiffel Tower's height and a mouth-like eroded hollow, and has the analyst argue that lunar geology cannot produce spires that sharp.

What is on the record

Two videos from the same channel carry the case, and the archive resolves one claimant: Manali Max Derikshani. That is a transcription of the theoretical physicist Maaneli "Max" Derakhshani, who appears under a second spelling in the later telling; the archive counts him once. Richard Hoagland is named in a telling as a commentator and does not count as a claimant. His older lunar "spire" and "castle" claims are public, but the archive has found nothing from him on De Forest beyond his name. Nothing in the way of a document or a frame identifier is attached.

Beyond the file, the crater's published description already contains the terraces. De Forest is a young crater whose inner walls have slumped into a series of steps around a large, angular central peak. Low sun does the rest. At seventy-seven degrees south the Sun sits a few degrees above the horizon, and a peak and its shoulders throw shadows many times taller than the rock that casts them. Sharp spires are what that looks like from above.

Why it sits where it does

One analyst on a single channel, retold twice: the case grades L1 and reflects nothing stronger. It once sat at L3 only because Hoagland's name was counted as a second claimant. What the frames of De Forest show is real terrain photographed from orbit under a grazing Sun. Whether anything stands among the terraces is not resolved here.