While many folks have delineated much of the oddity photographed on the surface seen in the public releases, and millions more are familiar with Apollo 17's public mission, not many to my knowledge have faced the dead reckoning of its Hidden Mission or what it was exactly that drew us there in the first place. It has been lying in plain sight all along in the orbital photos: once again, orbital photos not widely seen, and rarely displayed.
These were taken by the Apollo 17 panoramic camera during high sun, and show the entire massif as lit from above and over varying angles of obliquity, therefore eliminating the shadows over the west side in this article's previously shown high resolution images, revealing not only the spectacular and accurate as claimed hexagonal shape, but also stratigraphic details of the ruined and collapsed arcology within this shape.
Some may think all the surface strangeness I denote here is but conjecture, hardly provable and vastly differing from the official accounts, and the hill I say is possibly artificial isn't even hexagonal, and appears to be no more than a glorified dirt heap. All I can say to that is that yeah, both the official account itself and my interpretation thereof are fishy- deal with it, however your mind allows; but pictures speak louder than words.
This Massif is something special, something...wonderful. We walked right up to it. We rode under it to and fro, taking many exquisitely detailed photographs while putting the maps, antennae and TV camera in the way. We circled above it repeatedly and took super high resolution imagery then put it promptly away so virtually no one could see it.. We dug around with an actual geologist, (a good one too might I add) found red soil, saluted our flag, then published many papers describing what a wonderfully dull spot of desolation it is... We planted explosives all over it then crashed parts of our no longer useful spacecraft into it to make a big bang; and then classified the results of the experiment (which might I remind everyone again, Chapel Bell IS still classified).
What I'd like to know is.. when will it be declassified, and when are we going back?
Click HERE to see a larger enhanced version of this view (AS17-P-2894)
AS well, here are 2 more large enhanced versions of this area
(AS17-P-2314)
(AS17-P-2309)
Now for a 3-D view of the Apollo 17 landing site, courtesy Jeff Williams of the magnificent MarsUnearthed.com, whose anaglyphic wizardry has long given us fantastically realistic stereo images we'd have otherwise not seen. Thank you Jeff for your wonderful contribution.
These images require red/blue glasses. In the thumbnail below, he has detailed the actual landing area with a star, click it for the un-annotated full high resolution 3-D image.
On observing the terrain, I'd say that even though these images naturally exaggerate the relief, this was definitely one hairy landing.
Gene Cernan is without a doubt one hell of a pilot.
Further study and remarkable photos of this area and more are yet to come.
To be continued
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