O'Neill's Bridge
An amateur astronomer said he'd seen a giant natural bridge on the Moon, and a famous lunar mapper said he could see it too.
What was reported
In July 1953 John J. O'Neill, science editor of the New York Herald Tribune and a keen amateur astronomer, reported seeing a huge arch, about 20 km long, spanning a gap at the edge of the Moon's Sea of Crises. Sunlight seemed to pass beneath it.
The British astronomer Hugh Percy Wilkins, then one of the leading mappers of the Moon, said he had seen it as well, and described it on the radio as looking 'almost artificial'. The story spread widely.
Explanations offered
Other astronomers couldn't find it, and it was explained as a trick of light: sunlight catching two ridges near the headlands Promontorium Lavinium and Olivium can make a gap look bridged. Later telescope and spacecraft images show no bridge there.
- When
- 29 July 1953
- Where
- Edge of the Sea of Crises, the Moon
- Witnesses
- Science writer John J. O'Neill, and astronomer Hugh Percy Wilkins
- Status
- Explained
Famous cases are real, widely reported events. Each file sets out what witnesses said and the explanations that have been offered, without taking a side.