Vallis Schröteri anomaly

Vallis Schröteri, also called Schröter's Valley, is the largest sinuous rille on the Moon, a winding volcanic channel on the Aristarchus plateau of the near side. According to the account the archive holds, orbital imagery of the rille shows debris and a probe-like object between ten and twenty-five feet tall with a segmented track leading up to it. Two detection algorithms, one fractal and one the programme calls BITS, are said to rate it as strongly anomalous.

What is on the record

The whole file is one telling from one channel, with one claimant resolved: Max Dereckshani, a transcription of the physicist Maaneli "Max" Derakhshani. The telling also names Jeff Kruxchank, a transcription the archive cannot resolve. The programme's own transcript renders it differently and describes him as an Australian intelligence analyst, and the archive has found no independent record of him under either spelling. He comments on the frame rather than witnessing anything, and the archive does not count him as a claimant. There is no document in the file and no frame identifier.

The valley itself is well imaged; the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera has published narrow-angle views of its inner channel. Against that, the shape described is a familiar one. A boulder that breaks loose and rolls down a rille wall leaves a trail behind it, and where it bounces the trail comes out segmented. Such tracks are catalogued across the Moon. A second caution applies to any frame enlarged beyond its native resolution, because the interpolation grows edges that were never in the data. The archive holds the claim as it was made and can go no further without the frame.

Why it sits where it does

One video and one claimant put the case at L0, a single account. The second name in the telling is a commentator who cannot be traced, and he does not count. What the imagery holds is a small bright object and a trail in a volcanic valley. What made the trail is not resolved here.