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OrbitStudio / Lunar landmarks / Copernicus

Copernicus Crater

Often called the finest crater on the Moon to look at through a small telescope, and it holds up in relief too: terraced walls stepping down nearly four kilometers, and a cluster of central peaks made of rock lifted from deeper than anything else the impact exposed.

Diameter93 km
Relief, floor to rimOver 4,000 m
Central peaksRise about 1,300 m above the floor
AgeAbout 860 million years
Coordinates9.62° N, 20.08° W
SideNearside, southern edge of Mare Imbrium
Elevation sourceNASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO)

Diameter, relief, peak height and age as published by NASA Science and the LRO Camera team. Coordinates are the center point OrbitStudio uses for this destination.

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 kilometers across with more than 4,000 meters of relief between its floor and its rim. Its central peaks rise roughly 1,300 meters 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 kilometers 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.

Print Copernicus in OrbitStudio Watch how it works · 1:12

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 colored. No CAD, no mesh repair. The heights come from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been measuring the Moon's surface since 2009.

Trying it is free and needs no account: pick a region, generate it and turn it around in 3D. Downloading the model — STL files and pre-colored 3MF files for Bambu Studio or OrcaSlicer — uses one credit from a pass. The generator covers Mars too.

Other landmarks

Tycho Crater Apollo 11 landing site Tsiolkovskiy Crater Apollo landing sites All lunar landmarks

The night sky, too

OrbitStudio Sky, the night-sky tool, turns the sky over any place, on any date from 1900 to 2100, into a 3D-printable star map. Its STL is free.