Geological Chronicle
Gerasimovich lies on the Moon’s far side, beyond the western limb and west-northwest of Mare Orientale. An outer ejecta blanket reaches nearly to its rim; Houzeau is to the north and Ellerman to the southeast. The crater sits at the antipode of Mare Crisium. The registry gives its namesake as Boris Petrovich, a Soviet astronomer (1889–1937).
The outer rim is worn and reshaped by nearby impacts. The much younger crater Gerasimovich D crosses the northeastern rim and lies near the center of a poorly organized blanket of higher-albedo deposits. The young, sharp-rimmed Gerasimovich R sits just west-southwest of the outer rim. Small craterlets mark irregularities near the edges of the interior floor.
The crater hosts a powerful magnetic anomaly and a bright feature known as a lunar swirl. The swirl is unusually bright but shows no corresponding difference in topography. Its high albedo is thought to result from the localized magnetic field. The field is also thought to create a mini-magnetosphere that could protect the surface from radiation-driven darkening.