Where is Copernicus on the Moon?
Copernicus lies at 9.62° north, 20.08° west, on the nearside, sitting in the dark plains south of Mare Imbrium. It is visible in binoculars as a bright ring with a pale halo around it, and it is one of the easiest craters for a beginner to find and identify.
How big is Copernicus?
Copernicus is 93 kilometres across with more than 4,000 metres of relief between its floor and its rim. Its central peaks rise roughly 1,300 metres above the crater floor — close to a mile of mountain standing inside a hole in the ground.
Why do scientists care about the central peaks?
The rock that forms a central peak comes from deeper than any other material the impact threw up. That makes those peaks a free core sample of the lunar crust: without drilling, they put material from kilometres down onto the surface where an orbiter can measure its composition. Copernicus is one of the best-studied examples.
What does Copernicus look like as a 3D print?
The terraces are what make it. Where Tycho gives you one dramatic bowl, Copernicus gives you a staircase — concentric ledges where the crater walls slumped inward after the impact. Those steps catch the light at an angle and read clearly at true scale, so you rarely need much terrain exaggeration here.
What is OrbitStudio?
OrbitStudio turns real NASA lunar elevation data into 3D-printable models. You pick a region of the Moon on a globe or a flat map, choose a jigsaw puzzle or a solid ornament, and get one ready-to-print file with terrain and borders already separated and coloured. No CAD, no mesh repair. The heights come from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been measuring the Moon's surface since 2009.