Crater Copernicus on Earth's Moon

Hubble imaged Earth's closest neighbor in space, the Moon. Hubble was aimed at one of the Moon's most dramatic and photogenic targets, the 58-mile-wide (93-kilometer-wide) impact crater Copernicus. The image was taken while Hubble's Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph was aimed at a different part of the Moon to measure the colors of sunlight reflected off the Moon. This wide image clearly shows the ray pattern of bright dust ejected out of the crater over one billion years ago when an asteroid larger than a mile across slammed into the Moon. A close-up view of Copernicus's terraced walls is shown at lower right.