Heritage
JTC-1644
Mare Tranquillitatis
Less than 200 kilometres from Tranquility Base, where Apollo 11 set down in July 1969. The same dark basalt that took the first human footprint.
- Coordinates
- 2.40° N, 25.80° E
- Diameter
- 3.9 km
$349View crater
Joshua Tree, California · Dark Sky Country
Name a Real Crateron the Moon
More than a million craters are scattered across the Moon and fewer than sixteen hundred have ever been given a name. From the dark skies above Joshua Tree, California, we help you choose one of the rest, and put a name on it that lasts.
Certificate and ExplOrbit Moon Map included · Ships from the high desert
- 1.3M+
- Craters wider than one kilometre
- 5,185
- Craters wider than twenty kilometres
- ~1,600
- Craters that carry an official name
- 99.8%
- Of lunar craters still unnamed
The dedication
Four steps, about six minutes
No account, no subscription, no fine print buried anywhere. Choose the ground, name it, and we take care of the rest from Joshua Tree, California.
- 01
Open the lunar atlas
Explore an interactive map of the Moon’s near side. Every marker is a real, catalogued crater that has never been given a name by anyone.
- 02
Choose your crater
Filter by lunar sea, highland or heritage ground near the Apollo landing sites. Read its coordinates, diameter and depth before you decide.
- 03
Give it a name
Add the name, the occasion and a short inscription. Watch the certificate compose itself, letter by letter, as you type.
- 04
It arrives in the post
A letterpress certificate and a folded ExplOrbit Moon Map showing exactly where your crater sits, ready to hand over.
From the atlas
See all 21Craters currently unclaimed
21 unnamed craters are open in the Joshua Tree registry tonight. Each one is retired the moment somebody names it.
Heritage
JTC-2274
Montes Apenninus
In the foothills of the Lunar Apennines, within sight of Hadley Rille, where Apollo 15 parked the first vehicle ever driven on another world.
- Coordinates
- 25.40° N, 4.10° E
- Diameter
- 6.3 km
$349View crater
Terminator
JTC-1402
Oceanus Procellarum
One of the largest unclaimed craters on the near side, wide enough to swallow a city and deep enough to hide a mountain.
- Coordinates
- 9.40° N, 61.70° W
- Diameter
- 8.3 km
$249View crater
Terminator
JTC-2470
Southern Highlands
Crossed by the bright rays of Tycho, the youngest large crater on the Moon, whose splash marks reach a quarter of the way around the globe.
- Coordinates
- 41.30° S, 9.70° W
- Diameter
- 9.1 km
$249View crater
From $149
Everything included, shipped free
In the box
Something they can actually hold
A digital gift disappears into an inbox. This one gets framed. Every dedication leaves Joshua Tree as a physical package, printed and packed by hand.
The Certificate of Lunar Dedication
Printed on heavy cotton stock with your chosen name set large, alongside the crater’s true coordinates, diameter and registry number. Framed size, ready to hang.
The ExplOrbit Moon Map
A folded chart of the near side from our sister brand, with your crater marked and the great maria, mountain ranges and Apollo landing sites labelled.
Viewing notes for your crater
The nights your crater sits closest to the terminator, what you will need to see it, and where to stand in the park for the darkest sky.
Real catalogued craters, never a duplicateRetired from the atlas the moment it is dedicatedShips within one working day from the high desertCertificate and ExplOrbit Moon Map with every dedication
Choose your crater
The lunar library
Most of the Moon has never been named
Before you choose, it helps to know what you are choosing from. A few numbers that surprise nearly everybody.
1,300,000+
More than 1.3 million craters wider than a kilometre
The most complete modern survey of the Moon, built from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter data, catalogued over 1.3 million impact craters at least one kilometre across. Nobody has counted the smaller ones. Below a kilometre the number runs into the billions.
5,185
Roughly 5,185 craters are wider than 20 kilometres
Twenty kilometres is about the size where a crater stops being a simple bowl and starts developing terraced walls and a central peak. There are a little over five thousand of those on the Moon.
99.8%
Only about 1,600 craters carry an official name
The International Astronomical Union has formally named roughly sixteen hundred lunar craters since Giovanni Riccioli began the modern naming convention in 1651. Set against 1.3 million catalogued craters, that means more than 99.8 percent of the Moon's craters have never been named by anyone.
Why Joshua Tree
The darkest skies in Southern California sit right above our workshop
Joshua Tree National Park covers nearly 800,000 acres of desert where two ecosystems meet, and where the nearest city glow is far enough away that the sky genuinely goes black. People fly in from all over the world, drive out past Hidden Valley, turn off their headlights and wait for their eyes to adjust.
What they see is the reason this company exists. On a moonless night the Milky Way runs from horizon to horizon. And on the nights when the Moon is up, it is bright enough to read by, and close enough that its craters resolve in a pair of binoculars braced on a car roof.
We started The Joshua Tree Crater Company because visitors kept asking the same question at the end of a night out here: how do I keep this? A crater is our answer.
- Bortle 3
- Sky darkness across most of the park, dark enough for the Milky Way to cast a shadow.
- 2017
- The year Joshua Tree National Park was certified an International Dark Sky Park.
- 3M+
- Visitors a year, a great many of them arriving specifically after sunset.
Hidden Valley · 34.0122° N, 116.1686° W
Roughly forty minutes from the shop, and one of the finest naked-eye observing spots in the park.
Reasons people do this
A gift that does not get returned
Nine out of ten dedications from our Joshua Tree workshop are bought for somebody else. These are the moments they mark.
Birthdays
The gift for the person who genuinely has everything. Nobody has ever had a crater before.
Graduations
A marker for the moment somebody stepped into the rest of their life. Mounted, framed, kept.
Weddings & Anniversaries
Two names on one crater, on ground that will outlast every building on Earth.
New Arrivals
Name a crater the week a child is born and it grows up with them, hanging above the cot.
In Memory
A quiet, permanent place to put a name. Many of our customers say it is the only gift that felt right.
Retirements
Forty years of work deserves more than a card. Give them somewhere to look at night.
From the registry
What people do with them
I gave my father a crater in the Sea of Serenity for his seventieth. He set up his telescope in the driveway that night and found it. He has not stopped talking about it since.
Marisol R.
Twentynine Palms, California
We were married in the park at dusk and named a crater in Lacus Somniorum, the Lake of Dreams. The certificate hangs in the hallway. Guests always stop at it.
Dan & Priya K.
Joshua Tree, California
My students each picked a crater for our astronomy unit. Watching a fourteen-year-old realise that most of the Moon has no names yet is worth the whole lesson plan.
Ms. Alvarez
Yucca Valley High School
Tonight there are 21 unnamed craters left in our atlas
Pick one, put a name on it, and it comes off the list for good. The whole thing takes about six minutes and arrives in the post within the week.
