After reading an interesting story recently about the old tales of “The
Man in the Moon” and how sometimes people see a face when they look at
the moon it made me remember a conversation a few years ago about the
impact craters on the moon.
I was camping with friends one evening during a full moon and stated how cool it was to be able to see the large impact craters on the moon so clearly. One of my friends said, “you can really see them?” Of course I replied and we proceeded to walk into a clearing and I explained that those dark portions were ancient impacts from asteroids that collided with the moon millions of years ago. He was stunned having never heard that before and I was just as shocked to realize that such simple facts aren’t always common knowledge for people who weren’t as lucky to have a dad like mine who loved to teach. The fact is our moon helps protect the earth by absorbing many flying space objects as it circles our planet. Some impact craters are so large you can see with the naked eye and thousands can be seen in the impressive photographs taken by NASA over the years.
As you can see in the image above many of the large craters are named having been studied and classified over the years. Scientists have theorized that some of the large craters were created by ancient collisions with asteroids over 100 miles wide. It’s quite likely that many of these objects would have collided with our planet if we didn’t have the protection of the moon and other planets in our solar system. But many small objects like meteorites do slip through our atmosphere and can be found in relative abundance.
There is also evidence of much larger objects colliding with earth and leaving massive craters like one of the most famous in Arizona.
The Barrington crater is almost 3/4 of a mile wide and over 500 feet deep. This 49,000 year old crater is a “must see” tourist attraction for anyone visiting the state of Arizona.
In 1994 the Hubble space telescope recorded images of comet fragments colliding with the planet Jupiter as the animation video shows below. This was the first time scientists were able to study a direct impact as it was happening and provided valuable information on how the largest planet in our solar system absorbs space debris.
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