PIA20158: A Youthful Crater in the Cydonia Colles Region
 Target Name:  Mars
 Is a satellite of:  Sol (our sun)
 Mission:  Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO)
 Spacecraft:  Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO)
 Instrument:  HiRISE
 Product Size:  2880 x 1800 pixels (w x h)
 Produced By:  Johns Hopkins University/APL
 Other  
Information: 
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 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA20158.tif (5.191 MB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA20158.jpg (819.4 kB)

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The central portion of this image is dominated by a sharp-rimmed crater that is roughly 5 kilometers in diameter. On its slopes, gullies show young (i.e., geologically recent) headward erosion, which is the lengthening of the gully in the upslope direction.

This crater is also remarkable for another reason. This image is part of a stereo pair, and the anaglyph of these images shows that the bottom of the crater contains a small mound. This mound hints at a possible complex crater, with the mound being a central uplift. Complex craters as small as this one are uncommon and such examples may provide clues to the lithology of the rocks underground and possibly to the impact process itself.

This is a stereo pair with ESP_025716_2200.

The University of Arizona, Tucson, operates HiRISE, which was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington.

Image Credit:
NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona

Image Addition Date:
2015-11-27