Geological Chronicle
Mons Pico is a solitary lunar mountain in the northern Mare Imbrium basin, lying south of the dark-floored crater Plato on the southern rim of a ghost crater. Geologically, the peak forms part of the surviving inner ring of the Imbrium basin, extending northwest toward Montes Teneriffe and Montes Recti. The feature is elongated, measuring 25 kilometers long and 15 kilometers wide along a northwest–southeast axis.
The peak rises to a height of 2.4 kilometers, comparable to the maximum altitude of the Montes Teneriffe. As a highly reflective structure isolated on the lunar mare, Mons Pico casts prominent shadows under oblique sunlight. The mountain is also recorded as a location of transient lunar anomalies, and a smaller secondary peak to the southeast is known as Mons Pico β.
The mountain feature is thought to have been named by Johann Hieronymus Schröter for Pico del Teide on Tenerife, taking its name from the Spanish word for peak. Mons Pico also appears in science fiction, notably as the site of a space battle in Arthur C. Clarke's novel Earthlight and as an observed landmark in Jules Verne's novel Around the Moon.