Is the Rheita Valley Straight?

/td Pictures of the Rheita Valley taken from Earth seem to show that it bends sharply somewhere around the crater Mallet C. You can see this in my picture here. However, the valley approaches the limb, and foreshortening could make it look more bent than it really is.

This image is the valley as shown in the VMA for the time my picture was produced. It confirms the apparent bend. However if one puts this image into Jim Mosher's Lunar Terminator Visualisation Tool (LVTV) and asks it to show the valley as it would appear from directly overhead, one gets the picture below

I have drawn a straight line between the two ends of the valley. If one assumes the valley bends at Mallet C, then the maximum deviation is about the radius of Mallet C, 14 Km, in an overall length of 390 Km. I calculate that the deviation is only about 8°. Considering that the valley is poorly defined, being a hotchpotch of overlapping craters, I think it is only the closely-packed chain of small craters at its southern end that make it look bent at all.

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/td	Pictures of the Rheita Valley taken from Earth seem to show that it bends sharply somewhere around the crater Mallet C. You can see this in my picture here. However, the valley approaches the limb, and foreshortening could make it look more bent than it really is.
	This image is the valley as shown in the VMA for the time my picture was produced. It confirms the apparent bend. However if one puts this image into Jim Mosher's Lunar Terminator Visualisation Tool (LVTV) and asks it to show the valley as it would appear from directly overhead, one gets the picture below
	I have drawn a straight line between the two ends of the valley. If one assumes the valley bends at Mallet C, then the maximum deviation is about the radius of Mallet C, 14 Km, in an overall length of 390 Km. I calculate that the deviation is only about 8°. Considering that the valley is poorly defined, being a hotchpotch of overlapping craters, I think it is only the closely-packed chain of small craters at its southern end that make it look bent at all.