This image, taken by the Advanced Moon Imaging Experiment on board ESA's SMART-1 spacecraft, shows the central peaks of the lunar crater Zucchius. AMIE obtained the image last Jan. 14 from a distance of about 753 kilometers (467 miles) from the surface, with a ground resolution of 68 meters (216 feet) per pixel.
The imaged area is centered at 61.3 degrees south lunar latitude and 50.8 degrees west longitude. Zucchius is a prominent lunar impact crater located near the southwest limb.
It is 66 kilometers (41 miles) in diameter, but only its inside is visible in this image, because the AMIE field of view is 35 kilometers (21.7 miles) at the camera's distance.
Because of its location, the crater appears oblong-shaped due to foreshortening. It lies just to the south-southwest of Segner crater, and northeast of the much larger Bailly walled-plain. To the southeast is the Bettinus crater, a formation only slightly larger than Zucchius.
Zucchius formed in the Copernican era, a period in the lunar planetary history that extends from about 1.2 billion years ago to the present. Two other examples of craters from this period are Copernicus (about 800 milion years old) and Tycho (100 million years old).
Craters from the Copernican era show characteristic ejecta ray patterns – as craters age, ejecta rays darken due to weathering by the flowing solar wind.
The hills near the center of the image are known as the central peaks of the crater – features that tend to form in large craters on the Moon. The crater was created by the impact of a small asteroid onto the lunar surface.
The surface is molten and, similar to when a drop of water falls into a full cup, the hit surface bounces back, then solidifies into the central peak.
Zucchius is named for the Italian mathematician and astronomer Niccolo Zucchi (1586-1670).
