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by Akkana Peck
On the moon right now, just northwest of Schroter's Valley, there is a small, extremely bright spot in the area of Freud (Rukl 18). In the not-quite-steady seeing we're having right now, it appears to have rings around it -- it looks like an Airy disk with diffraction rings, and as time passes the extent of the "rings" gets wider and wider. It's probably the tip of a peak sticking up into the sunlight, something covered with Aristarchus material that gives it its unusually bright tone, but it's so much brighter than anything around it (including Aristarchus itself) that it caught my eye and sparked the perennial lunie hope -- "A new impact?"
No, not likely, of course ... but it's pretty (I sketched it) and striking, and I'll keep taking peeks now and then to see how the light changes. Take a peek yourself, if you're up late reading mail and you have a clear sky.
Sketch at http://www.shallowsky.com/images/sketch/SVspot.jpg though it doesn't really show the brightness of the spot compared to everything else there. I wanted to play with paintshop pro a bit more to try to enhance the effect to make it look like what I saw visually, but don't have time -- packing to leave for RTMC!
Oh, looking again at Rukl 18, there is a somewhat brighter-albedo hill shown in the right place -- east and slightly south of Freud. I guess this hilltop was sticking up into the sun when I caught it.
