Categories: Mercury

A Peek at a Pitch-Black Pit

[/caption]

MESSENGER captured this high-resolution image of an elongated pit crater within the floor of the 355-km (220-mile) -wide crater Tolstoj on Mercury on Jan. 11, 2012. The low angle of sun illumination puts the interior of the pit crater into deep shadow, making it appear bottomless.

Pit craters are not caused by impacts, but rather by the collapse of the roof of an underground magma chamber. They are characterized by the lack of a rim or surrounding ejecta blankets, and are often not circular in shape.

Since the floor of Tolstoj crater is thought to have once been flooded by lava, a pit crater is not out of place here.

The presence of such craters on Mercury indicates past volcanic activity on Mercury contributing to the planet’s evolution.

Read more on the MESSENGER mission website here.

Image credit: : NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington

Jason Major

A graphic designer in Rhode Island, Jason writes about space exploration on his blog Lights In The Dark, Discovery News, and, of course, here on Universe Today. Ad astra!

Recent Posts

Neutron Stars are Jetting Material Away at 40% the Speed of Light

It’s a well known fact that black holes absorb anything that falls into them. Often…

5 hours ago

Lunar Night Permanently Ends the Odysseus Mission

On February 15th, Intuitive Machines (IM) launched its first Nova-C class spacecraft from Kennedy Space…

14 hours ago

Webb Joins the Hunt for Protoplanets

We can't understand what we can't clearly see. That fact plagues scientists who study how…

17 hours ago

This Supernova Lit Up the Sky in 1181. Here’s What it Looks Like Now

Historical astronomical records from China and Japan recorded a supernova explosion in the year 1181.…

19 hours ago

Hubble Sees a Star About to Ignite

This is an image of the FS Tau multi-star system taken by the Hubble Space…

20 hours ago

This Black Hole is a Total Underachiever

Anyone can be an underachiever, even if you're an astronomical singularity weighing over four billion…

21 hours ago