The bright lunar crater with prominent rays in the southern highlands is Tycho.
Tycho is a relatively young impact crater about 108 million years old. Its sharply defined rim, terraced walls, bright interior, and central peak make it stand out from many older, more weathered lunar craters. The impact created a spectacular ray system—streaks of bright ejecta extending as far as about 1,500 kilometres across the Moon.
Its rays are easiest to see around the full Moon, when sunlight highlights the high-albedo material. Tycho lies in the Moon’s southern highlands, while the similarly famous Copernicus crater is farther north and Kepler is associated with a prominent ray system in Oceanus Procellarum. Aristarchus is also exceptionally bright, but it is a different crater.
NASA’s Surveyor 7 landed near Tycho’s rim in 1968 and found that the surrounding highlands contain abundant anorthosite, an aluminium-rich rock. The crater’s name honours the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe.