An Etymological Dictionary of Astronomy and Astrophysics
English-French-Persian

Same as → Meteor Crater.

Names after Daniel Barringer (1860-1929), American geologist, who bought the Crater in 1903, convinced that it was made by a huge → meteorite; → crater.

A crater about 200 km in diameter on the northern coast of the Yucatan Peninsula, near the town of Chicxulub, Mexico. It is attributed to a 10 km wide → asteroid that hit the Earth about 65 million years ago (→ Chicxulub impactor). Ten years before the 1990 discovery of the Chicxulub crater, physicist Luis Alvarez and geologist Walter Alvarez proposed a theory to explain the formation of the crater. They noted increased concentrations of the element → iridium in 65-million-year-old clay. Iridium is rare on Earth, but it's more common in some objects from space, like → meteors and asteroids. According to the Alvarez theory, a massive asteroid had hit the Earth, blanketing the world in iridium. The collision caused fires, climate change and widespread extinctions, among which that of dinosaurs, who had lived for 180 million years.

Named after a twon in the Mexican state of Yucatan, which lies near the geographic center of the → crater.

1) A bowl-like depression on the rigid surface of a planet, satellite, or asteroid usually caused by the high-speed impact of a colliding object.
2) A bowl-shaped cavity at the mouth of a volcano.
3) The Cup. A small → constellation with faint stars, in the Southern Hemisphere, that lies next to → Hydra, at about 11h 20m right ascension, 15° south declination. Abbreviation: Crt; genitive: Crateris.

From Gk. krater "a wide, two-handled bowl for mixing wine with water," from kerannynai "to mix;" PIE base *kere- "to mix, confuse."

Lâvak "a large wooden bowl for kneading dough."
Kandâl "cavity, pit" in Qâeni, from kand- past tense stem of kandan "to dig" (Mid.Pers. kandan, O.Pers./Av. kan- "to dig," Skt. khan- "to dig") + -al, → -al.
Jâm "cup, chalice, goblet, bowl," Mid.Pers. jâm "vessel, goblet; glass," Av. yama- "glass, glass vessel," yâmô.pacika- "baked glass;" related to Skt. camasa- "a vessel used at sacrifices for drinking Soma, kind of flat dish or cup?"

The lower part of an → impact crater bounded by the rising → crater rim.

→ crater; → floor.

That part an → impact crater that extends above the height of the local surface, usually in a circular or elliptical pattern.

→ crater; → rim.

The process by which craters form on the surface of Solar System objects.

From → crater + → -ing

From lâvak or kandâl, → crater, + zâyi from zâ- present tense stem of zâdan "to give birth," Mid.Pers. zâtan, Av. zan- "to bear, give birth to a child, be born," infinitive zazâite, zâta- "born," cf. Skt. janati "begets, bears," L. gignere "to beget," PIE base *gen- "to give birth, beget."

A small crater often beside a larger one on the surface of the Moon or solid planets.

From → crater + -let diminutive suffix.

Lâvakcé, kandâlcé from lâvak, kandâl, → crater, + -cé diminutive suffix.

A depression produced by the collision of a meteorite, asteroid, or comet with the surface of a planet or a satellite. Impact craters are the most characteristic surface features of solar system rigid bodies. They range in size up to hundreds or thousands of kilometers (where the impacts create giant basins as on the Moon, Mars, and Mercury).

→ impact; → crater.

An ice-filled → impact crater located in the northern lowlands of Mars at 73° north latitude and 165° east longitude, south of the large Olympia Undae dune field that partly surrounds Mars' north polar cap. Korolev crater is 82 km across with its centre hosting a mound of water ice some 1.8 kilometres thick all year round. The reason for the permanently stable water ice in the crater is because its deepest part acts as a natural cold trap. The air above the ice cools and is thus heavier compared to the surrounding air: since air is a poor conductor of heat, the water ice mound is effectively shielded from heating and sublimation.

The crater is named after chief rocket engineer and spacecraft designer Sergei Korolev (1907-1966), dubbed the father of Soviet space technology.

A → crater on the surface of the Moon.

→ lunar; → crater.

A → meteorite impact crater located about 55 km east of Flagstaff, near Winslow in the northern Arizona desert of the United States. Meteor Crater is about 1,200 m in diameter and some 170 m deep. It is thought to have formed between 20,000 to 50,000 years ago, by the impact of a small → asteroid about 25 m in diameter. Same as → Barringer Crater.

→ meteor; → crater.

A crater formed by the relatively low-velocity impact of fragments ejected from a large primary crater. Secondary craters tend to cluster in a ring around the primary crater.

→ secondary; → crater.

A crater about 70 km in diameter in Western Australia, considered to be the oldest recognized → meteorite impact structure on Earth. A precise age of 2 229 ± 5 million years is derived from shocked zircon and monazite crystals in the rocks. The age coincides, within uncertainty, with temporal constraint for the youngest Palaeoproterozoic glacial deposits. Numerical impact simulations indicate that a 70 km size crater created by the impact in a continental glacier could release between 8.7 × 10¹³ to 5.0 × 10¹⁵ kg of H₂O vapor instantaneously into the atmosphere. These results provide new estimates of impact-produced H₂O vapor abundances for models investigating termination of the Paleoproterozoic glaciations, and highlight the possible role of impact cratering in modifying Earth's → climate (Erikson, T.M. et al., 2020, Nature communications, 21 January).

The Yarrabubba structure is located on the Yilgarn Craton in Western Australia (lat. 27° 11'S, long. 118° 50'E), approximately 100 km southeast of the township of Meekatharra; → crater.