Most prominent is Copernicus, a crater 93km wide.
It is also 3.7km deep which the shadows help us see.
There is in fact a central peak in Copernicus about 1.2km high, but it remains hidden in the dark:
The smaller crater at the end of Montes Apenninus is Eratosthenes.
We've taken a look at it before.
Or have we?
Anyways, if you turn you attention to the southern tip, we can see two craters that have some significance:
First, we got Tycho, which is the crater with the really large rays. Tycho is prominent on a full Moon when you can see the ray pattern.
Then you got Clavius.
Clavius is officially a walled plain with a diameter of 225km. There's a bunch of craters inside Clavius, the largest is called Rutherfurd.
Clavius doesn't get too much attention since it's way down on the southern tip.
If you are a 2001: A Space Odyssey fan, you may remember that the Moon base was in Clavius and that the TMA, Tycho Magnetic Anomaly was excavated in, well, Tycho.
This is sort of interesting for a little further south in Cabeus, is where NASA crashed that probe and found water.
We can't see Cabeus for it is really close to the southern pole and I don't think it ever gets any light.
I really dig Arthur C. Clarke and think it would be kinda neat if we(humans) actually did establish a Moon base close to where he envisioned.
That little bit of 2001 trivia is also your Moon factoid for the night.
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