Approximately 150 impact craters are known on Earth, but most are severely eroded or hidden beneath tonnes of rock. Still, a few spectacular examples are visible with aerial photography, satellites or instruments that can peek beneath the surface.
Also known as the “eye of Quebec”, Manicougan Crater in Canada is one the Earth’s oldest known impact craters, and is about 200 million years old. Today it contains a 70-kilometre hydroelectric reservoir along its edge. The island in the centre of the crater was formed by post-impact uplift of the land. Also visible in the bottom left-hand corner is the fin of the space shuttle from which this image was taken.
(Image: LSTS-9 Crew/NASA/GSFC)
Lake El’gygytgyn, which lies 100 kilometres north of the Arctic circle in Russia, sits inside a 3.6-million-year-old impact crater. In this false-colour image taken by NASA’s Terra Satellite, red indicates tundra vegetation, grey-brown is land and deep blue is water. The site is valuable to climate scientists because the area escaped glacial erosion in the last ice age, so the lake bed sediments offer a continuous record of past Arctic conditions.
(Image: NASA)
A 3D map of local gravity and magnetic field variations reveals the Chicxulub crater in Mexico, now buried beneath tonnes of sediment. This view is looking down at the surface, from an angle of about 60º. The asteroid that created it was up to 20 kilometres wide and is thought by many to have killed off the dinosaurs by kicking up enough sun-blocking material to cool the planet.
(Image: LPI)
The Wolfe Creek Crater is a well-preserved crater in Australia, around 900 metres wide. It formed around 300,000 years ago, and the smash is thought to have completely liquefied both the meteorite and surrounding rocks. The white spot in the centre is a large deposit of sedimentary gypsum.
(Image: Jesse Allen/TERRA/ASTER/NASA)
This classic image of the imaginatively named Meteor Crater in the Arizona desert – created by the Canyon Diablo meteorite – also happens to be an optical illusion. Take a look at the crater upside down to see it…
(Image: D. Roddy/USGS/LPI)
