Tycho (lunar crater)

Tycho

Tycho seen by Lunar Orbiter 5. NASA
Diameter	86.21 km
Depth	4.8 km
Colongitude	12° at sunrise
Eponym	Tycho Brahe

This article is about the lunar crater. For the Martian crater with the same eponym, see Tycho Brahe (crater).

Tycho is a prominent lunar impact crater located in the southern lunar highlands, named after the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe (1546-1601). To the south is the crater Street; to the east is Pictet, and to the north-northeast is Sasserides. The surface around Tycho 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.

Age and description

Tycho is a relatively young crater, with an estimated age of 108 million years (Ma), based on analysis of samples of the crater rays recovered during the Apollo 17 mission. This age suggests that the impactor may have been a member of the Baptistina family of asteroids, but as the composition of the impactor is unknown this is currently conjecture. However, simulation studies give a 70 percent probability that the crater was created by a fragment from the same break-up that created asteroid 298 Baptistina; a larger asteroid from the same family may have been the impactor responsible for creating Chicxulub Crater on Earth 65 million years ago (mya), and causing the extinction of the dinosaurs.

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 forming long spokes that reach as long as 1,500 kilometers. Sections of these rays can be observed even when Tycho is illuminated only by earthlight.

The large ray system centered on Tycho

The ramparts beyond the rim have a lower albedo than the interior for a distance of over a hundred kilometers, and are free of the ray markings that lie beyond. This darker rim may have been formed from minerals excavated during the impact.

Its inner wall is slumped and terraced, sloping down to a rough but nearly flat floor exhibiting small, knobby domes. The floor displays signs of past volcanism, most likely from rock melt caused by the impact. Detailed photographs of the floor show that it is covered in a criss-crossing array of cracks and small hills. The central peaks rise 1.6 kilometers above the floor, and a lesser peak stands just to the northeast of the primary massif.

Infrared observations of the lunar surface during an eclipse have demonstrated that Tycho cools at a slower rate than other parts of the surface, making the crater a "hot spot". This effect is caused by the difference in materials that cover the crater.

Panoramic view of the lunar surface taken by Surveyor 7, which landed about 29 km (18 miles) from the rim of Tycho

The rim of this crater was chosen as the target of the Surveyor 7 mission. The robotic spacecraft safely touched down north of the crater in January 1968. The craft performed chemical measurements of the surface, finding a composition different from the maria. From this one of the main components of the highlands was theorized to be anorthosite, an aluminium-rich mineral. The crater was also imaged in great detail by Lunar Orbiter 5.

From the 1950s through the 1990s, NASA aerodynamicist Dean Chapman and others advanced the lunar origin theory of tektites. Chapman used complex orbital computer models and extensive wind tunnel tests to support the theory that the so-called Australasian tektites originated from the Rosse ejecta ray of Tycho. Until the Rosse ray is sampled, a lunar origin for these tektites cannot be ruled out.

This crater was drawn on lunar maps as early as 1645, when Antonius Maria Schyrleus de Rheita depicted the bright ray system.

Satellite craters

By convention these features are identified on Lunar maps by placing the letter on the side of the crater mid-point that is closest to Tycho.

Tycho	Latitude	Longitude	Diameter
A	39.9° S	12.0° W	31 km
B	43.9° S	13.9° W	13 km
C	44.3° S	13.7° W	7 km
D	45.6° S	14.0° W	27 km
E	42.2° S	13.5° W	14 km
F	40.9° S	13.1° W	16 km
H	45.2° S	15.8° W	8 km
J	42.5° S	15.3° W	11 km
K	45.1° S	14.3° W	6 km
P	45.3° S	13.0° W	8 km
Q	42.5° S	15.9° W	21 km
R	41.8° S	13.6° W	5 km
S	43.4° S	16.1° W	3 km
T	41.2° S	12.5° W	14 km
U	41.0° S	13.8° W	19 km
V	41.7° S	15.3° W	4 km
W	43.2° S	15.3° W	19 km
X	43.8° S	15.2° W	13 km
Y	44.1° S	15.8° W	19 km
Z	43.1° S	16.2° W	24 km

Fictional references

Tycho was the location of the Tycho Magnetic Anomaly (TMA-1), and subsequent excavation of an alien monolith, in the seminal science-fiction film and book 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke. One of the Clavius Base scientists made the prophetic assessment that the monolith "appears to have been deliberately buried."

It also serves as the location of "Tycho City" in Star Trek: First Contact; a lunar metropolis by the 24th century.

In the 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.

In Robert A. Heinlein's book The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, Tycho is the location of the lunar habitat "Tycho Under".

In Jack Williamson's 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 Heinlein's short story "Blowups Happen", one of the characters hypothesizes 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.

Clifford Simak set a 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.

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 the film Men in Black, the character agent K, played by Tommy Lee Jones, informs an alien bug that it is in violation of "section 4153 of the Tycho Treaty," presumably a treaty signed on Tycho.

In the Retrieval Artist Novels by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, there is a settlement on the moon called Tycho Dome.

In the pulp series Captain Future written by Edmond Hamilton, Tycho is also concealing the base and home for the Futuremen and their vessel the Comet. It is also from where they can spot the magnesium flare beacon triggered in Earth's north pole warning that the Solar system is in danger.

In Sims 2 for PSP the alien child of Pascal Curious is named Tycho.

In Roger Macbride Allen's Hunted Earth series of novels, the Naked Purples own a former penal colony in or around Tycho crater known as Tycho Purple Penal (see The Ring of Charon).

Gallery

• 
  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.

See also

• Tycho Brahe (crater) (on Mars)