This photograph shows King Crater on the Moon's farside. King Crater is 77 kilometers in diameter and more than 5 kilometers deep. It is the freshest crater in this size range on the farside of the Moon. Its overall form is generally typical of large lunar craters. The floor of the crater is relatively flat in places and has numerous small hummocks in other places. The central peak has complex, Y-shaped form and is larger than normal for a crater of this size. The inside of the crater rim contains a series of terraces and slump blocks. Just north of the rim of King Crater, there is a dark, flat patch of ground that formed where molten material ponded in an old, degraded impact crater. This material might have been molten by the impact that formed King Crater; alternatively, it has been suggested that it formed volcanically.
The boom from Apollo 16's gamma-ray spectrometer is visible on the right side of the photo.
Image Credit: NASA
Credit: Lunar and Planetary Institute