Tuesday, February 2, 2010

LRO Mini-RF: Asymmetric crater in Mare Nubium


Mini-RF has imaged this unusual crater in Mare Nubium that shows a bright pattern of ejecta around the crater, but with and excluded zone in one sector. We know from laboratory experiments that this is caused by a very low-angle, oblique impact, coming from the direction of the excluded zone (south). The large crater at bottom is Kies C (26° S 26.1° W; 5 km diameter). Area shown is about 12 km wide by 25 km long [View large version of the Nubium Crater (1.3 MB) NASA/GSFC/LRO-Mini-RF].

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