There are some particularly interesting features visible in my image, so I’ve chosen a selection to examine in more detail.

First up is the crater Copernicus. It measures 93km across, which coincidentally is the distance from my home city of Bristol to Oxford.

Copernicus was formed around 800 million years ago, which makes it fairly young as lunar features go. As for how it was made, our current best guess is that an asteroid called 495 Eulalia broke apart, and part of this smashed into the Moon, forming Copernicus. The crater rim then collapsed inwards, creating step-like terrace areas, while the surface rebounded, leaving a peak in the middle.

Next we have a crater called Tycho, which at 85km across is almost the same size as Copernicus. It also has central peaks made during its formation impact. Their highest point measures 1.6km from the crater’s base, which is like five Eiffel Towers stacked on top of each other.

Nearby is Clavius, which is quite different from Tycho. For a start it’s a lot bigger, at 225km across. It’s also very old, having formed around four billion years ago. It features overlapping craters, each one younger than the last. Science fiction buffs may recongnise the name; it’s the location of Clavius Base in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Moving on and we come to Sinus Iridium. This was once a full crater, but its southern rim was destroyed and lava flooded in, then eventually dried and hardened. So, now we say that Sinus Iridium isn’t a crater, but rather a bay.

Vallis Alpes caught my eye when I was processing the image. It’s a long valley, around 166km (approx. Bristol to London), and up to 10km wide at points. It wasn’t made by an impact, but is actually a tectonic fracture made when the lunar surface cracked.

Nearby is the Plato crater, which is nearly circular, although is looks a bit oblong in my photo just because of the viewing angle. Its floor is quite smooth, made from basaltic lava that flooded the crater base. This buried the original crater floor, leaving it mostly flat, aside from a peppering of tiny craters that unfortunately my photo isn’t quite detailed enough to reveal.