Posted by People have always debated whether there is life on other planets, and some wonder whether there was ever life on the Moon. Nothing has ever emerged from official missions, but plenty of strange photos circulate online, especially of supposed buildings or artefacts in images taken by the Apollo missions.
Photo AS17-135-20680 was taken by the Apollo 17 astronauts in December 1972. It is almost entirely white, but when the contrast is increased a shape resembling a pyramid appears. According to NASA it is a “sunstruck” frame, and the official caption suggests it shows the floor of the lunar rover. The photos taken just before it show similar shapes.
A pyramid on the Moon
The most famous of these photos is the one with NASA code AS17-135-20680. Many sites list it as AS17-136-20680, but the correct magazine is 135. It was taken during the last Apollo mission, Apollo 17, in December 1972, with a Hasselblad camera, during the astronauts’ second moonwalk.
At first glance it looks like a “blank” photo: it is almost completely white, overexposed. But in recent years someone tried adjusting its contrast and brightness on a computer, and a triangular shape appeared, looking just like a pyramid, with another smaller shape beside it.
Many have seen in that image proof that there was not only life on the Moon but intelligent life, even a civilisation capable of leaving monuments still visible after millions of years. And naturally there was no shortage of people accusing NASA of a cover-up.
The explanation
The explanation, unfortunately for mystery lovers, is much more down to earth. NASA’s official caption for this frame is “LRV Floor? Sunstruck.” In other words, the photo was probably taken by mistake, very close to the Lunar Roving Vehicle the astronauts used to drive around, while sunlight shone straight into the lens and burned out almost the whole image.
Even The Black Vault, a website that collects UFO documents, noted that the same magazine contains other photos, such as 20678 and 20679, with very similar angular shapes that in a bad photo might look like a pyramid. Other enthusiasts pointed out that on the Moon, with no atmosphere, the landscape always stands out against a black sky: a distant pyramid would never appear as a silhouette against a white background.
Will Earth, millions of years from now, look as barren and grey as the Moon? Will our pyramids survive that long? We will never know. But the pyramid in photo AS17-135-20680 is, in all likelihood, just a piece of rover lit by the sun. What do you think? An illusion, or the work of an extinct alien civilisation?
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