Photo: NASA/JPL/UArizona
There’s a saying going something on the lines that try as one might, no one and no thing can ever achieve perfection. That’s probably even more so when talking about impact craters, the remnants of violent events that have the power to obliterate entire species and civilizations.
But what is a perfect impact crater? One could say such a thing is a perfectly round hole in the ground, with beautiful walls rising up to shield a perfectly flat bottom, and the surrounding environment hugging the scar from all sides, without dwarfing it in any way.
I know, the definition of a perfect crater is probably something that never crossed your mind, and to be honest, the same happened to me. Until I came across this thing here, probably the most beautiful impact crater in the entire solar system. Or, at least, the most beautiful that we know of.
The place is located on Mars, one of the perfect targets for the Asteroid Belt as it shoots deadly pieces of rock toward our Sun from time to time. It’s seen here as it was in June 2020, when the HiRISE camera passed overhead and snapped a photo of it.
The reason this photo exists is that the people from NASA and the University of Arizona, who tell the camera where to go and what to do, wanted to “examine at least two layers that are exposed in the wall of an impact crater.” Why? Because “even without a 3D picture, we can easily see that the crater’s walls are fairly steep,” and that made people curious as to why.
The question has not been answered yet, and until it does, we’re left with marveling at the stunning appearance of the place. Generally speaking, this is an unimportant crater, less than 5 km (3.1 miles) across, lost in a sea of other such features in the Phlegra Montes region of the planet.
It's so unimportant, that it doesn’t even have a name of its own. But that doesn’t diminish its merits, be they visual, in the slightest.
I know, the definition of a perfect crater is probably something that never crossed your mind, and to be honest, the same happened to me. Until I came across this thing here, probably the most beautiful impact crater in the entire solar system. Or, at least, the most beautiful that we know of.
The place is located on Mars, one of the perfect targets for the Asteroid Belt as it shoots deadly pieces of rock toward our Sun from time to time. It’s seen here as it was in June 2020, when the HiRISE camera passed overhead and snapped a photo of it.
The reason this photo exists is that the people from NASA and the University of Arizona, who tell the camera where to go and what to do, wanted to “examine at least two layers that are exposed in the wall of an impact crater.” Why? Because “even without a 3D picture, we can easily see that the crater’s walls are fairly steep,” and that made people curious as to why.
The question has not been answered yet, and until it does, we’re left with marveling at the stunning appearance of the place. Generally speaking, this is an unimportant crater, less than 5 km (3.1 miles) across, lost in a sea of other such features in the Phlegra Montes region of the planet.
It's so unimportant, that it doesn’t even have a name of its own. But that doesn’t diminish its merits, be they visual, in the slightest.
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