Elongated "butterfly crater" on Mars

Filed under pretty pictures, explaining science, amateur image processing, Mars, Mars Odyssey, impact cratering

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A very unusual elongated crater located north of Acheron Fossae on Mars. The crater is 15 kilometers long but only half that wide.

NASA / JPL / UA / mosaic by Emily Lakdawalla

This is a mosaic of three images captured by the THEMIS instrument on Mars Odyssey in its daytime mode. Source images: V13947003, V30669005, and V12100004.

Copyright holder: Emily Lakdawalla

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Contact us to request publication permission from the copyright holder. Original image data dated on or about October 1, 2008