Lunar craters Lunar craters Lunar craters are impact craters on Earth's Moon. The Moon's surface has many craters, almost all of which were formed by impacts. The word "crater" was adopted from the Greek word for vessel - (Κρατήρ a Greek vessel used to mix wine and water). Galileo built his first telescope in late 1609, and turned it to the Moon for the first time on November 30, 1609. He discovered that, contrary to general opinion at that time, the Moon was not a perfect sphere, but had both mountains and cup-like depressions. These were named craters by Schroeter (1791), extending
Lunar craters a new lunar impact crater database similar to Wood and Andersson's, except hers will include all impact craters greater than or equal to five kilometers in diameter and is based on Clementine (spacecraft) images of the lunar surface. The "moon zoo" project within the Zooniverse program aimed to use citizen scientists to map the size and shape of as many craters as possible using data from the NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. However, it has since been retired. Craters constitute 95% of all named lunar features. Usually they are named after deceased scientists and other explorers. This tradition comes from Giovanni