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The crater Webb, as seen from Lunar Orbiter 1. Several smaller craters can be seen in and around Webb. Side view of the crater Moltke taken from Apollo 10. Lunar craters are impact craters on Earth's Moon. The Moon's surface has many craters, all of which were formed by impacts.
The following reference sites were also used during the assembly of the crater information. Astronomica Langrenus — Italian Lunar Web Site; Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature; Moon map. List of craters on the Moon; Lunar Atlases at the Lunar & Planetary Institute Digital Lunar Orbiter Photographic Atlas of the Moon; Lunar Nomenclature
Mare Imbrium and the crater Copernicus. The origin of the Moon's craters as impact features became widely accepted only in the 1960s. This realization allowed the impact history of the Moon to be gradually worked out by means of the geologic principle of superposition. That is, if a crater (or its ejecta) overlaid another, it must be the younger.
The Pre-Nectarian period is defined from the point at which the lunar crust formed, to the time of the Nectaris impact event. Nectaris is a multi-ring impact basin that formed on the near side of the Moon, and its ejecta blanket serves as a useful stratigraphic marker. 30 impact basins from this period are recognized, the oldest of which is the South Pole–Aitken basin.
The surface around Tycho is replete with craters of various sizes, many overlapping still older craters. Some of the smaller craters are secondary craters formed from larger chunks of ejecta from Tycho. It is one of the Moon's brightest craters, [3] with a diameter of 85 km (53 mi) [4] and a depth of 4,700 m (15,400 ft). [1]
The huge indent, called the 'imbrue basin,' stretches across 750 miles.
Copernicus H, a typical "dark-halo" crater, was a target of observation by Lunar Orbiter 5 in 1967. Dark-halo craters were once believed to be volcanic in origin rather than the result of impacts. The Orbiter image showed that the crater had blocks of ejecta like other craters of similar size, indicating an impact origin.
The Chandrayaan-3 landing site, called Shiv Shakti Point, was about 217 miles (350 kilometers) away from the rim of the South Pole-Aitken Basin, considered the oldest crater on the moon.