Afon (crater)

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Afon is the name of an impact crater on the heavily cratered asteroid (243) Ida . (243) Ida orbits the sun in the main outer belt of the asteroid belt . Afon has a mean diameter of around 800 meters.

It is located exactly on the prime meridian of (243) Ida, with Afon being arbitrarily chosen as the prime meridian.

The rocks near the Afon crater could be identified as LL5 and LL6 chondrites , that is, meteorite rocks with a low proportion of nickel iron and other metals that were strongly heated. LL4 chondrite can be detected on the Ida moon Dactyl , which suggests that Dactyl is an impact fragment from the Afon region.

designation

The crater was given a proper name in 1994 by the International Astronomical Union (IA) as the first named surface formation on the asteroid. Craters on (234) Ida are named after caves. Afon is part of the Russian name of the Abkhazian Achali-Atoni grotto ( Russian : Новоафонская Пещера ; transcription : Novoafonskaja Peshchera ), one of the world's largest stalactite caves .

See also

Individual evidence

  1. Wolfgang Zeitler, Timm Ohlhof, Heinrich Ebner : Photogrammetic Point Determination Using Digital Galileo SSI Images From Asteroid Ida . ( PDF , 445 kB; English)
  2. James Granahan: Ordinary Chondrite Spectral Signatures in the 243 Ida Systems . (PDF, 982 kB, English)
  3. Afon in the Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature of the IAU (English)