Geological Chronicle
Crookes is an impact crater situated in the highland region of the Moon's far side, just southwest of the enormous Korolev impact basin. With a diameter of 48.25 kilometers, the formation features a rim with relatively high albedo centered within a ray system. Its ejecta forms a nearly continuous blanket extending at least one crater diameter outward before reaching across several hundred kilometers of the surface, including a substantial portion of Korolev.
Because of these prominent rays, Crookes is mapped as part of the Copernican System. Infrared spectra have identified pure crystalline plagioclase on the western ejecta. The impactor likely arrived from the north-northeast at an angle of 15° to 45°, leaving a sharp-edged, uneroded rim whose wide inner walls have slumped inward to form a terrace system.
Offset slightly to the east of the crater midpoint, a small central peak rises from the interior floor. Spectra fit an anorthositic gabbro mineralogy excavated from a depth of 4.9 to 7.4 kilometers. In 1970, the International Astronomical Union officially adopted the designation in honor of English chemist and physicist William Crookes.