Geological Chronicle
Dating to the Nectarian epoch of the lunar geologic timescale, Pitatus spans 100.63 kilometers at the southern edge of Mare Nubium. Its complex wall is heavily worn and encroached by lava flows. The crater Hesiodus is joined to the northwest rim by a narrow cleft, while attached to the south lie the craters Wurzelbauer and Gauricus.
Pitatus is classified as a floor-fractured crater, flooded from its interior by magma intrusion through cracks and openings. The floor contains low hills in the east, faint traces of deposited ray markings, and a network of slender clefts named Rimae Pitatus, whose larger rilles trace the inner wall edges in the northern and eastern halves.
Near the middle of the floor, a low central peak offset to the northwest rises 0.5 kilometers in height. The crater rim drops to its lowest level to the north, where lava almost joins Mare Nubium, while in the adjacent mare lies the half-buried rim of Pitatus S. In 1935, the IAU officially named the formation for Italian astronomer Pietro Pitati.