Central Pit Craters - Nadine G. Barlow

Nadine G. Barlow, Astrophysicist, Professor, Department of Physics and Astronomy at Northern Arizona University, Director, NAU - NASA Space Grant Program will be speaking on 'A Comparison of Central Pit Craters in the Solar System.

Craters with central depressions, called central pit craters, were initially thought to only occur on Mars, Ganymede, and Callisto and were attributed to impact into ice-rich crustal materials. Spacecraft exploration of the solar system has now revealed central pit craters are also on Mercury, the Moon, Ceres, Europa, and some of the Saturnian satellites. Their presence on bodies with low concentrations of target volatiles such as Mercury and the Moon suggests that pit formation is more complicated then simply due to impact into volatile-rich targets. We are conducting the first comparison study of central pit craters across the solar system to determine how target material and surface gravity influences pit morphology and morphometery.