Africa Map from Earth Impact Database

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Basic Science Studies II: Impact Cratering
by The Remote Sensing Tutorial

North American Impact Craters 
Data from Observer's Handbook 2004, Royal Astronomical Society of Canada 

Courtesy Energy Mines and Resources, Canada

The crater was drilled in 1951 and 1952 to a depth of 4,019 feet (1,225 m), and the cores that were obtained confirmed an impact origin. The crater is believed to contain commercially viable deposits of hydrocarbons.- Source: Wikipedia

NASA/Landsat 7 Image. Submitted of Keith Morrison.

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Haughton Crater, Devon Island as a Mars Analog Environment
 

See Also:
Mars on Earth
 

Image Courtesy of National Geographic NASA Haughton-Mars Project (HMP)

Aerial Photograph Impact Database.

Nicholson is a meteor crater in the Northwest Territories, Canada. It is 12.5 km in diameter and the age is estimated to be less than 400 million years (Devonian or earlier). The crater is not exposed to the surface.

NASA/Landsat 7 Image. Submitted of Keith Morrison.

Pilot crater is a meteor crater in the Northwest Territories, Canada, just north of the Alberta border and near Fort Smith. It is 6 kilometres in diameter and the age is estimated to be 445 ± 2 million years (Upper Ordovician).

The crater contains Pilot Lake, a pristine fresh-water lake that covers 43 square kilometres (16 mi²) and is 90 metres (300 ft) deep. Lake trout, northern pike, whitefish and pickerel are plentiful, supporting a summer market for recreational fishing. - Source: Wikipedia

Steen River is an impact structure (astrobleme) in Alberta, Canada. It is 25 km in diameter and the age is estimated to be 91 ± 7 million years (Lower Cretaceous). The crater is not exposed to the surface. The crater was partially eroded prior to burial, and lies under 200 m of sediments.

Carswell is an impact crater in Saskatchewan, Canada. It is 39 km in diameter and the age is estimated to be 115 ± 10 million years (Lower Cretaceous). The crater is exposed to the surface.

Elbow is a meteor crater in Saskatchewan, Canada. It is 8 km in diameter with an age estimated to be 395 ± 25 million years (during the Devonian Period). The crater is not exposed to the surface.

Viewfield is an impact crater in Saskatchewan, Canada. It is 2.5 km in diameter and the age is estimated to be 190 ± 20 million years (Late Triassic). The crater is not exposed to the surface.

Aerial Photograph Impact Database.

Gow is a meteor crater in Saskatchewan, Canada. It is 4 km (2.5 mi) in diameter and the age is estimated to be less than 250 million years (Triassic or later). The crater contains a classic crater lake with an island formed by the central uplift.

Image Courtesy NASA/JPL Click Image for Larger Version

This crater consists of a near-circular bay, about 5 kilometers (3 miles) wide and 220 meters (720 feet) deep, in the otherwise shallow Reindeer Lake. Such deep circular lakes are unusual in this region, which is dominated by the shallow gouging of glacial erosion. The circular shoreline, at a diameter of 11 kilometers (6.8 miles), is partially surrounded by a ridge with heights to 100 meters (328 feet) above the lake surface. The diameter of this ridge, ~13 kilometers (8 miles), is likely the outer rim of the impact structure. The structure was formed in Precambrian metamorphic crystalline rocks with a conspicuous northwest trending fabric. Although not obvious from the surface, Deep Bay is a complex impact structure with a low, totally submerged central uplift. Samples obtained in the 1960's from drilling into the central structure revealed shocked and fractured metamorphic rocks flanked by deposits of allocthonous, mixed breccias. (Courtesy NASA/LPI) 
 

Image Courtesy ESA

Saint Martin is an impact crater in Manitoba, Canada. It is 40 km in diameter and the age is estimated to be 220 ± 32 million years (Triassic). The crater is not exposed to the surface.

Aerial Photograph Impact Database

West Hawk is a meteor crater in Manitoba, Canada. It is 2.44 km in diameter and the age is estimated to be 351 ± 20 million years (Mississippian). The crater is not exposed to the surface. The crater forms the main central portion of West Hawk Lake.

Aerial Photograph Impact Database

Couture is a lake in Northern Quebec, Canada. Most of the lake covers an 8 km in diameter impact crater. The crater is estimated to be 430 ± 25 million years old (Silurian).

Aerial Photograph Impact Database

La Moinerie is a meteor crater in Quebec, Canada. It is 8 km in diameter and the age is estimated to be 400 ± 50 million years (Silurian or Devonian). The crater is exposed to the surface and filled with water, forming Lac La Moinerie. Glaciers have eroded many of La Moinerie crater's original physical features, including much of the central uplift. 
Location 57°26'N 66°37'W
 

Image Courtesy NASA

La Moinerie crater, Quebec, Canada, 57°26'N, 66°37' W. Source: NASA Shuttle photograph STS099-723-43

Image Courtesy Paul Nopper

Just to the northwest is the La Moinerie Crater, another terrestrial blemish from the distant past. They stand out very distinctly in the north, above the tree line. Click on Image for full story...

Courtesy: NASA - STS61A-35-86 Click on Image for larger view

Courtesy: NASA - Landsat

The lakes fill depressions that are interpreted as paired impact craters (astroblemes). The eastern and western craters are 26 km and 36 km in diameter, respectively. Each crater has same age, 290 ± 20 million years (Permian), and it is believed that they formed simultaneously. The impactors may have been gravitationally bound as a binary asteroid. This suggestion was first made by Thomas William Hamilton in a letter to Sky & Telescope magazine in support the then-controversial theory that asteroids may possess moons.

The lakes are actually a single body of water with a sprinkling of islands forming a "dotted line" between the eastern and western parts. The name is due to the clear water it holds. There are actually 25 lakes of that name in the province (26 if you count the "Petit lac à l'Eau Claire" —the "Small Clearwater Lake"). These are the largest and northernmost.
- Source: Wikipedia

Aerial Photograph Impact Database

Île Rouleau is a meteor crater in Quebec, Canada. It is 4 km in diameter and the age is estimated to be less than 300 million years (Permian or earlier). The crater is exposed to the surface.

Aerial Radar Impact Database

Charlevoix is an impact crater in Quebec, Canada. It is 54 km in diameter and the age is estimated to be 342 ± 15 million years (Mississippian). The crater is exposed to the surface. It is filled with shatter cones, PDF in quartz and feldspar grains. It is a multi-ringed basin with a central uplift. Part of the crater is covered by the St. Lawrence River. It was discovered to be a meteor crater in 1965 after the discovery of many shatter cones in the area. Only a semi-circle of the crater is left due to the other half being flooded.
 

Aerial Photo by by: Charles O'Dale

Image Courtesy NASA/JPL Click Image for Larger Version

Mistastin crater is a meteor crater in Labrador, Canada which contains the roughly circular Mistastin Lake. The lake's arcuate central island is interpreted to be the central uplift of the complex crater structure. The target rocks were part of a batholith composed of adamellite, mangerite and lenses of anorthosite. There are abundant shock metamorphic features exhibited in the rocks of the island. PDFs, diaplectic glass, melt rocks, and shatter cones have been identified. The lake is approximately 16 km in diameter, while the estimated diameter of the original crater is 28 km. The age of the crater is estimated to be 36.4 ± 4 million years (Eocene). - Source: Wikipedia

Montagnais is a meteor crater located on the continental shelf south of Nova Scotia, Canada. The centre is estimated to be located at 42°53'N, 64°13'W. Measuring 45 km in diameter, the crater's age is estimated to be 50.50 ± 0.76 million years (Paleocene). The crater is underwater and not exposed to the surface.

Aerial Radar Impact Database

The basin is located on the Canadian Shield in the city of Greater Sudbury, Ontario. The former municipalities of Rayside-Balfour and Valley East lie within the Sudbury Basin, which is referred to locally as "The Valley". The urban core of the former city of Sudbury lies on the southern outskirts of the Basin.

Formation and structure

The Sudbury Basin is 60 km long, 30 km wide and 15 km deep. It was created as the result of a 10 km cometary impact that occurred 1.85 billion years ago in the Paleoproterozoic era. Its present size is believed to be a smaller portion of a 250 km round crater that the bolide originally created. Subsequent geological processes have deformed the crater into the current smaller oval shape. Sudbury Basin would then be the second largest crater on earth, after the 300 km Vredefort crater in South Africa, and larger than the 170 km Chicxulub crater in Yucatán, Mexico which is linked to the extinction of the dinosaurs.

The deformation of the Sudbury structure occurred in four main deformation events (by age):

   1. the Penokean Orogeny (1900 Ma)
   2. intrusion of the Sudbury Igneous Complex (1844 Ma)
   3. the Grenvillian Orogeny (1400 - 1000 Ma)
   4. the Lake Wanapitei impact (37 Ma)

Throughout the 20th century the origin of the Sudbury Basin was widely disputed

Modern uses

The large impact crater filled with magma containing nickel, copper, platinum, palladium, gold and other metals. As a result of these metal deposits, the Greater Sudbury area is one of the world's major mining communities. The region is one of the world's largest supplier of nickel and copper ores. Most of these mineral deposits are found on the outer rim of the Basin. Due to the high mineral content of its soil, the floor of the Basin is among the best agricultural land in Northern Ontario, with numerous vegetable, berry and dairy farms located in the Valley. However, due to its northern latitude, it is not as fertile as agricultural lands in the southern portion of the province. Accordingly the region primarily supplies products for consumption within Northern Ontario, and is not a major food exporter.

Source: Wikipedia
 

Image Courtesy University of Toronto through Museum of Nature, Berlin

Aerial Photograph Impact Database

Impact Structures in Canada: their recognition and characteristics; Robertson, P.B. and Grieve, R.A.F.; R.A.S.C. Journal., Vol. 69, No. 1 (1975).

It is 7.5 km in diameter and the age is estimated to be 37.2 ± 1.2 million years, placing it in the Eocene.

It was evident by the mid-1970s that Wanapitei Lake was an impact crater. Remarkably, it lies on the eastern edge of the much older, larger Sudbury structure. Crumbly impact breccia cobbles containing bits of dark glass called suevite are found surrounding the lake,some with Coesite, one of the markers of an impact structure. The suevite is very close in appearance and composition to some of that described from the Ries impact site that formed simultaneously with the smaller Steinheim Crater.

It is a popular recreational and residential area in Sudbury, and the lake is the largest in the world completely contained within the boundaries of a single city. The Wanapitei River flows through the lake. There is a provincial park located on the north shore of Lake Wanapitei; this is a non-operating park so there are no facilities. The lake has a number of small islands within it. Named islands include Blueberry, Howie, Wanapitei, MacLennan and Bonanza.

The small Wanapitei Ojibwe reserve is also located on the lake's northwestern shore.

The lake's name comes from the Ojibwa word waanabidebiing, or "concave-tooth [shaped] water", which describes its shape. A nearby community which takes its name from the river is spelled Wahnapitae. However, the Wanapitei spelling is correct for both the lake and the river. - Source: Wikipedia

Aerial Photograph Impact Database

A sign, erected at the site by the Archeological and Historic Sites Board, Archives of Ontario, reads:

    The Brent Crater: First recognized in 1951 from aerial photographs, the crater is a circular depression about two miles in diameter formed in Precambrian crystalline rocks. Geophysical and diamond drilling investigations show that the crater has a present depth of about 1,400 feet but is partly filled with sedimentary rocks with a thickness of 900 feet. The rocks beneath the crater floor are thoroughly fragmented over a depth of 2,000 feet. Like the similar New Quebec (Chubb) crater, the Brent crater is attributed to the high speed impact of a giant meteorite. It is calculated that the impact released energy equaling 250 megatons of TNT and occurred about 450 million years ago when this area was probably covered by a shallow sea.

There is an observation tower on the rim of the crater and a hiking trail leading to the crater floor. There are two small lakes, Gilmour and Tecumseh, located in the crater. Unlike most Algonquin Park lakes, which are usually acidic, the water in these lakes contains bicarbonate; this is thought to be a result of some sedimentary deposits of limestone escaping removal by glaciers in the lower parts of the crater.

The crater was named after the nearby village of Brent.
- Source: Wikipedia
 

Aerial Photograph Impact Database

Image courtesy of V. L. Sharpton/LPI

This is the one that got the Dinosaurs

The Chicxulub crater in the Yucatan peninsula, Mexico, is not visible at the surface of the seafloor. Scientists rely on geophysical images for information about its size and shape. This image shows the variations in the gravity field near the buried impact crater. The image shows ring-like structures that extend to about 280 kilometers (175 miles) from the center.

This crater is believed to have formed when an asteroid struck Earth 65 million years ago. This impact is thought to have triggered fires and tsunamis and created a cloud of dust and water vapor that enveloped the globe in a matter of days, resulting in fluctuating global climate changes. The extreme environmental shifts caused a mass extinction of 75% of Earth's species, including the dinosaurs.

The Chicxulub crater in the Yucatan peninsula, Mexico, is not visible at the surface of the seafloor. Scientists rely on geophysical images for information about its size and shape. This image shows the variations in the gravity field near the buried impact crater. The image shows ring-like structures that extend to about 280 kilometers (175 miles) from the center.

This crater is believed to have formed when an asteroid struck Earth 65 million years ago. This impact is thought to have triggered fires and tsunamis and created a cloud of dust and water vapor that enveloped the globe in a matter of days, resulting in fluctuating global climate changes. The extreme environmental shifts caused a mass extinction of 75% of Earth's species, including the dinosaurs.

SOURCE: Lunar and Planetary Institute

More Detailed Information: NASA Planetary Journal
PIA03379: Shaded Relief with Height as Color, Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico

More Information: NASA Near Earth Object Program
Radar image of the southwest portion of the buried Chicxulub impact crater in the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico

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