Geological Chronicle
Schröter is an impact crater spanning 36.67 kilometers in diameter on the eastern expanse of Mare Insularum, situated near the central meridian of the Moon north of Sömmering and Mösting. The rim of the crater is heavily worn and degraded, punctuated by a deep indentation along its southeastern margin and a wide opening in its southern wall. The interior floor lacks a central peak.
A spaced line of small craterlets extends westward from the northern wall of Schröter, leading toward a region of irregular terrain near the satellite crater Schröter W. In the nineteenth century, Franz von Paula Gruithuisen examined this northern tract with a small refracting telescope and interpreted its crisscrossing dark linear markings as a lunar city called Wallwerk. Later observations with higher-resolution instruments showed that the pattern was an ordinary natural landscape.
The area surrounding the crater also drew the attention of later observers tracking transient lunar phenomena. Professor W. H. Pickering produced sketches of Schröter depicting what he interpreted as eruptions of steam, though other astronomers did not confirm the sightings. To the southeast, the cleft Rima Schröter begins at a small mare crater and runs toward the south-southeast, while the crash site of the Surveyor 2 spacecraft lies roughly 100 kilometers to the west-northwest.