Aristarchus is a prominent lunar impact crater; situated in the northwest part of the Moon's near side, it is considered the brightest of the large formations on the lunar surface, with an albedo (the ratio of light reflected by a surface) nearly double that of most lunar features.

Being clearly visible also to the naked eye, the crater has for centuries been one of the most watched, so much that it was given its name by Italian astronomer Giovanni Riccioli since 1651, even if it was ufficially adopted only since 1935.

The pyramid discovered by LRO

It's surprising, therefore, that only in 2011, thanks to a photo taken by the LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) probe you would notice, as relaunched on the web by dozens of ufologist blogs all around the world, that in the middle of the crater and on its steep walls some mysterious pyramids appear to rise.

The photo in question, taken November, 10, 2011 while LRO was running from North to South, about 70 kilometers East of Aristarchus, at a height of 26 kilometers from the surface (just over twice the height usually operated by airliners on Earth), would seem to show in addition to the central pyramids the ruins of other mysterious structures linked to them, which could be traces of an ancient mining site.

Lights inside Aristarchus

Skeptics reiterate that are not in any way artificial structures, but of simple rock formations due to the impact of a meteorite on the lunar surface, the same which created the crater. The fact is that Neil Amstrong and Buzz Aldrin, the first two men to land on the Moon with Apollo 11, signaled the sighting of some lights inside the Aristarchus crater the day before their moon landing, the same lights which had been reported in 1958 by the Russian astronomer Nikolai Kozyrev.

Anyhow Aristarchus even if it had never been and “alien” lunar mining site, could in the future become a lunar human mine: in 2005 space telescope Hubble within a project confirmed that Aristarchus is full of such mineral deposits, which could be exploited to produce oxygen for future human settlements on the Moon.