The Exoarchaeologist’s Field Guide
to Lunar Mission Photography

By Allan Sturm

The Exoarchaeologist’s Field Guide to Lunar Mission Photography aims to correct the longstanding absence of structured, science-based inquiry into the search for extraterrestrial artifacts by serving as a catalyst for fresh new conversations in the search for physical evidence of non-human intelligence activity in our solar system — without the need for conspiracies or government coverups to drive the conversation.

For more than four decades, structured inquiry into the Search for Extraterrestrial Artifacts (SETA) has remained largely absent from serious scientific discourse. The field guide reintroduces the spirit of open inquiry with a disciplined, science-based methodology grounded in careful visual judgment.

It defines a structured, science-based framework for examining lunar mission photography for evidence of extraterrestrial artifacts. It neither defends existing assumptions nor advances pre-established conspiracy claims, focusing instead on disciplined visual analysis, shared analytic language, and science-backed methods designed to improve perception and reduce pareidolia.

Drawing from WWII aerial photo interpretation, aerial archaeology, and modern digital imaging practices, the field guide establishes an entirely new set of workflows designed to aid the analyst in the identification of anomalous decameter- and kilometer-scale geometric structures and modified terrain. These methods are illustrated using Arizona State University’s high-resolution digital scans of NASA’s lunar mission photography, many of which resolve detail at or beyond the resolution of the original film grain.

The front half of the guide (Chapters 1–10) is highly detailed and beautifully illustrated, spanning over 200 pages and featuring 422 illustrations covering humanity’s story of life on the Moon, a visual primer of common geological features, an overview of lunar mission photography, how to get started in anomaly detection, the fundamentals of anomaly detection, image selection and preparation, identification and description of Areas of Interest (AOI) and Objects of Interest (OOI), perception-enhancement techniques, best practices when working with candidate anomalies, and how to be your own worst critic before socializing your research.

In the back half of the guide (Chapter 11), the analyst and enthusiast alike can apply their new identification and perception-enhancement skills to hundreds of AOI and OOI training images, ranging in difficulty from subtle to obvious. All of the training image anomalies shown were identified using the basic methods presented in the guide and are fully referenced to their original archive sources and frame numbers, inviting further independent, advanced analysis, discussion, and debate.