thumb|right|Location of Tycho Crater as seen from the [[Northern Hemisphere]]

thumb|3D model of Tycho 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, and a depth of around .

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 interior has a high albedo that is prominent when The Sun is overhead, and the crater is surrounded by a distinctive ray system Earlier lunar cartographers had given the feature different names. Pierre Gassendi named it Umbilicus Lunaris ('the navel of the Moon'). van Langren's 1645 map calls it "Vladislai IV" after Władysław IV Vasa, King of Poland. And Johannes Hevelius named it 'Mons Sinai' after Mount Sinai.

Satellite craters

By convention, these features are identified on lunar maps by placing the letter on the side of the crater midpoint that is closest to Tycho.

{| class="wikitable sortable" style="text-align:center"

|-

! Tycho

! class="unsortable" | Coordinates

! Diameter

|-

|A

|

|29 km

|-

|B

|

|14 km

|-

|C

|

|7 km

|-

|D

|

|26 km

|-

|E

|

|13 km

|-

|F

|

|17 km

|-

|H

|

|8 km

|-

|J

|

|11 km

|-

|K

|

|6 km

|-

|P

|

|7 km

|-

|Q

|

|20 km

|-

|R

|

|4 km

|-

|S

|

|3 km

|-

|T

|

|14 km

|-

|U

|

|20 km

|-

|V

|

|4 km

|-

|W

|

|21 km

|-

|X

|

|12 km

|-

|Y

|

|22 km

|-

|Z

|

|23 km

|}

Fictional references

  • There is a chapter entitled "Tycho" in Jules Verne's Around the Moon (Autour de la Lune, 1870) which describes the crater and its ray system.
  • In R.A. Heinlein's 1940 short story "Blowups Happen", a character speculates that Tycho may have been the location of a sentient race's main atomic power plant, in a past time when the Moon was still habitable—and that the plant exploded, causing the craters, the rays spreading from Tycho, and the death of all life on the Moon.
  • C.D. Simak set his 1961 novelette The Trouble with Tycho, at the lunar crater. He also postulated that the crater's rays were composed of volcanic glass (tektites) akin to a theory postulated by NASA researchers Dean Chapman and John O'Keefe in the 1970s.
  • In Heinlein's 1966 book The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, Tycho is the location of the lunar habitat named "Tycho Under".
  • Tycho was the location of the Tycho Magnetic Anomaly (TMA-1), and subsequent excavation of an alien monolith, in 2001: A Space Odyssey, the seminal 1968 science-fiction film by Stanley Kubrick and book by Arthur C. Clarke.
  • In the 1987 film Can't Buy Me Love, Cindy notices Tycho while looking through a telescope on her final "contractual" date with Ronny in the Airplane Graveyard.
  • It also serves as the location of "Tycho City" in the 1996 film Star Trek: First Contact; a lunar metropolis by the 24th century.
  • In Jack Williamson's 2001 novel Terraforming Earth, the crater is utilized for "Tycho Base", a self-sustaining, robot-controlled installation aimed at restoring life to the (dead) planet Earth after an asteroid sterilizes the biosphere.
  • In the 2019 film Ad Astra, the Moon base is situated in the Tycho crater. This is Roy's first stop on his journey to Mars.
  • Crater Tycho figures prominently in the Matthew Looney and Maria Looney series of children's books set on the Moon, authored by Jerome Beatty.
  • In R.M. Allen's Hunted Earth novels, the 'naked purples' own a former penal colony in or around Tycho crater known as "Tycho Purple Penal" (see The Ring of Charon).
  • Tycho is referenced in the band Cojum Dip's song, Waltz in E Major, Op. 15 "Moon Waltz".
  • Tycho is referenced in the 2022 game Horizon Forbidden West as the site of a Helium-3 mine.
  • In both the book series and TV adaptation The Expanse, Tycho is a mobile construction platform or space station.

<gallery widths="230px" heights="220px" perrow="4">

Image:Lunar2007 eclipse-LiamG.jpg|March 2007 lunar eclipse. The advancing shadow of Earth brings out detail on the lunar surface. The huge ray system emanating from Tycho is shown as the dominant feature on the southern hemisphere.

Image:LRO Tycho Central Peak 0.25.jpg|Central peak complex of Tycho Crater, taken at sunrise by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2011

File:Tycho crater 4119 h2.jpg|Lunar Orbiter 4 image from 1967

File:Tycho crater floor 5125 h2.jpg|Lunar Orbiter 5 image of the northeastern crater floor, showing irregular surface of cracked impact melt. Illumination is from lower right.

File:AS15-95-12997 contast enhanced.jpg|Tycho Crater was not photographed up-close during the Apollo program, but Apollo 15 captured this distant oblique view.

File:Radar_Image_of_Tycho_Crater_from_Jean-Luc_Margot%27s_PhD_work.png|Radar image of Tycho Crater

</gallery>

See also

  • 1677 Tycho Brahe, minor planet
  • Tycho Brahe (Martian crater)
  • Tycho's Nova, bright supernova

References

</references>

Sources

  • . For more, see