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Gallery: Our Moon’s captivating craters

Jatan Mehta

Jatan Mehta

— 3 min read

Our Moon hosts an incredible diversity of craters, many of which are well preserved since their formation over a billion years ago! Here’s a tour of some of the most intriguing lunar craters—from gigantic ones to literally micro and everything in between. This is the fourth blog post in a curated gallery series touring pretty sights on our Moon, following views of marvelous mountains, lovely lava channels and just some weird yet wonderful features.

Note: You can click on the images to learn about each feature.

The 312 kilometers wide Schrödinger crater with its crown-shaped mountain ring. Credit: NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) | Also see: The huge, peak-ringed Apollo crater
The lava-flooded and half-buried crater of Letronne, stretching 120 kilometers across. Credit: Apollo 16
A spectacular closeup view of the 40-kilometer wide Aristarchus crater and its arc-shaped central mountain. Credit: NASA LRO
The 77 kilometers wide King crater and its Y-shaped mountains on the Moon’s farside. Credit: Apollo 16
The (geologically) fresh, 3.4-kilometer wide Hell Q crater. Credit: NASA LRO
The striking 930 kilometers wide multi-ring impact basin of Orientale. Credit: LROC Quickmap
The 86 kilometers wide Tycho crater on the Moon and its central peak. Credit: NASA LRO
The wildly irregular 20-kilometer wide Larmor Q crater. Credit: NASA LRO
The 93 kilometers wide Copernicus crater on the Moon and its two central peaks. Credit: NASA LRO
The 13 kilometers wide Hawke crater, formed on top of the rim of another crater. Credit: NASA LRO
The geologically rich, 135-kilometer wide Aitken crater. Credit: Apollo 17
A 650-700 meters wide ghost crater with visible ejecta. Credit: NASA LRO
The incredibly geologically diverse 110-kilometer wide Gassendi crater. Credit: NASA LRO | Also see: The polygonal-shaped Krieger crater
The 180 kilometers wide Von Kármán crater on the Moon’s farside—home to the Chang’e 4 spacecraft and rover—which formed on top of an even larger crater. Images: NASA LRO, Graphic: Jatan Mehta
A beautiful impact crater 2 kilometers across, deformed by a tectonic ridge. Credits: NASA LRO
Catena Davy, a chain of 23 craters spanning over 50 kilometers, formed so because the Moon's tidal forces fragmented the incoming comet/asteroid. Credit: Apollo 12
The Posidonius crater and its long lava channel. Credit: NASA LRO
A truly tiny crater, little more than 10 microns wide, on a Moon rock brought to Earth by Apollo 12. Credit: NASA
Changing morphology of craters on the Moon with increasing sizes. Image credits: NASA LRO, Graphic: Jatan Mehta

Hope you enjoyed these curated views of some of the most captivating craters on our Moon. If you’d like to browse more lunar craters, the NASA LRO outreach team has a fantastic blog.

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