Pic of the Week: Eerie Crater Marks the Spot

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Martian crater Airy-0. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona)

This week’s pic is an eerie crater within the Airy Crater on Mars that marks an important spot – 0° longitude on Mars. You can see this position of this smaller crater, Airy-0, within the larger crater below. NASA posted this image on Instagram with a few more details:

The larger crater that sits within this crater, called the Airy Crater, originally defined zero longitude for Mars, but as higher resolution photos became available, a smaller feature was needed. This crater, called Airy-0 (zero) was selected because it did not need to adjust existing maps.

This image was captured by the High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE), on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The map is projected here at a scale of 50 centimeters (19.7 inches) per pixel.

The Airy Crater is names after Sir George Biddell Airy, the 7th Astronomer Royal, in 1850.

Image (Credit): Martian crater Airy. (Wikimedia Commons)