Geological Chronicle
Pallas is a heavily eroded lunar impact crater spanning 49.51 kilometers in diameter north of Sinus Medii. Its outer wall is worn, notched, and distorted in shape, with the associated crater Pallas A lying across the northwest rim. To the southeast, Pallas connects directly to the crater Murchison, sharing a low wall broken by two gaps. Farther northwest sits Bode, a smaller crater that shows less wear.
Flooding by lava later covered the inner floor of Pallas, leaving a relatively flat surface disrupted only by an intact central peak complex. The crater commemorates Peter Simon Pallas, a German-born Russian geologist and natural historian.
The vicinity of Pallas drew attention after Dr. Leon H. Stuart, a physician and amateur astronomer, photographed what appeared to be a flare of light 16 km southeast of Pallas on November 15, 1953. The flash was estimated to last eight to ten seconds, though professionals of the period dismissed it as a meteoroid entering Earth's atmosphere. Decades later, Dr. Bonnie Buratti of JPL examined Clementine spacecraft images and located a 1.5-kilometer-diameter crater whose size, shape, and albedo match the expected impact energy, leading some astronomers to agree that Stuart photographed an asteroid impact on the Moon.