Tycho: an IAU-named crater you can fly to at 125 km

Measured facts

Feature type

Impact crater

Body

Moon

Latitude

-43.30°

Longitude

-11.22°

Diameter

85 km

Approach altitude

125 km

Catalogued surface imagery

303 pixels/degree, approximately 100 m/pixel at the lunar equator

Classification

IAU named feature

What you are looking at

Feature coordinates are body-fixed longitude and latitude, converted into a position on the lunar sphere before the camera flight begins. The flight resolves the governing body from the feature record rather than assuming the Moon.

Close approach stops at a declared 125 km altitude, so the delivered LROC mosaic remains near its native ground sampling instead of being magnified into implied detail.

The ray system that makes Tycho conspicuous is part of the mosaic. COSMOS does not model it, highlight it or draw crater geometry.

Catalogue record

The feature record is a provenance-carrying object, not a label pasted onto a texture: IAU named feature. Its name, centre and diameter are adopted from the IAU, while the visible surface remains the parent body’s observational mosaic.

Nomenclature source

USGS Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature

Source record

https://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov/Feature/6163

Provenance category

measured-catalogue-data

Parent imagery category

observational-composite

Limitations COSMOS discloses

• The visible surface is LROC WAC morphology imagery, not a NAC regional product, so fine crater structure is not resolved.
• No elevation model is integrated, so the crater rim and central peak are shaded by the source imagery rather than displaced geometry.
• A feature coordinate in this catalogue is a catalogue entry. It is not an observation of the feature at the selected date.