Crater Tycho on the Moon

This mottled landscape showing the impact crater Tycho is among the most violent-looking places on our Moon. This image, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, reveals lunar features as small as roughly 560 feet (170 meters) across. The large "bulls-eye" near the top of the picture is the impact crater, caused by an asteroid strike about 100 million years ago. The bright trails radiating from the crater were formed by material ejected from the impact area during the asteroid collision. Tycho is about 50 miles (80 kilometers) wide and is circled by a rim of material rising almost 3 miles (5 kilometers) above the crater floor. The image measures 430 miles (700 kilometers) across, which is slightly larger than New Mexico. Hubble doesn't often view Earth's moon. This image was taken in preparation for using the reflected sunlight from the Moon for observations of the transit of Venus in 2012, which Hubble could not observe directly without damage to its instruments. For more information, visit: hubblesite.org/news_release/news/2012-22