Tycho (lunar crater)
lunar crater
Tycho () is a prominent lunar impact crater located in the southern lunar highlands, named after the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe. It is around 108 million years old. It is one of the Moon's brightest craters, with a diameter of around 85 km (53 mi) and a depth of around 4.7 km (2.9 mi).
To the south of Tycho is the Street Crater, to the east is Pictet Crater, and to the north-northeast is Sasserides Crater. The surface around Tycho Crater 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 Crater.
Age and description
Tycho Crater is relatively young, with an estimated age of 108 million years, based on analysis by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. This age initially suggested that the impactor may have been a member of the Baptistina family of asteroids, but as the composition of the impactor is unknown this remained conjecture.
However, this possibility was ruled out by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer in 2011, as it was discovered that the Baptistina family was produced much later than expected, having formed around 80 million years ago.
The crater is sharply defined, unlike older craters that have been degraded by subsequent impacts.
The public source identifies “Tycho (lunar crater)” as lunar crater. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Tycho, lunar and crater.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q631696. The Library of Congress control number is sh2011005659. Authority coordinates are -43.300, -11.220. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2011.
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This entry incorporates text from “Tycho (lunar crater)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.