Stickney (crater)

Stickney crater , image of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in (overemphasized) false colors (2008)

Phobos, side facing Mars, image of Viking Orbiter 1 (1978)

Stickney is the largest impact crater on the Martian moon Phobos . Its diameter is 9 km. The crater thus takes up a considerable part of the surface of the approximately 27 × 22 × 18 km large moon. Stickney is on the center of the western edge of the Mars-facing side of the moon.

The crater is named after Chloë Angeline Stickney Hall , the wife of the American astronomer Asaph Hall , who discovered the two Martian moons Phobos and Deimos . The crater was named in 1973 after images taken by the Mariner 9 probe .

Stickney has a smaller impact crater inside, which is a result of a later impact and is about 2 km in diameter. He was named Limtoc in 2006 , after a character in Gulliver's Travels .

Inside, Stickney has a distinct stripe-like texture that comes from rock slides, from material that has slipped into the crater.

Stickney also seem to radiate grooves and chains of craters . According to findings obtained from data from the Mars Express probe in 2006 , however, these have no causal connection to Stickney, but could have been formed by material that came from impacts on Mars. According to a more recent interpretation from 2015, the grooves are comparable to " stretch marks " and are caused by the strong tidal forces to which the moon is exposed.

Web links

Commons : Stickney (crater) - collection of images, videos and audio files

Flight around Phobos (animation film)
Stickney in high resolution

Individual evidence

↑ ^a ^b Phobos: Crater, craters in the Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature of the IAU (WGPSN) / USGS . Retrieved November 14, 2015.
^ Veverka, Joseph et al. "A Mariner 9 atlas of the moons of Mars," Icarus 23, 206-289 (1974).
↑ Phobos from 6,800 kilometers (Color) . NASA / JPL-Caltech / University of Arizona. April 9, 2008. Retrieved April 9, 2008.
↑ Murray, John B. et al. " New evidence on the origin of Phobos' parallel grooves from HRSC Mars Express (PDF; 475 kB)," Lunar and Planetary Science XXXVII (2006).
↑ astropage.eu: The Martian moon Phobos is slowly falling apart - Astropage.eu / Wissenschaftsnachrichten. In: astropage.eu. Retrieved January 25, 2016 .

[USGS-1] Phobos: Crater, craters in the Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature of the IAU (WGPSN) / USGS . Retrieved November 14, 2015.

[nomenclature-2] Veverka, Joseph et al. "A Mariner 9 atlas of the moons of Mars," Icarus 23, 206-289 (1974).

[ejection-3] Phobos from 6,800 kilometers (Color) . NASA / JPL-Caltech / University of Arizona. April 9, 2008. Retrieved April 9, 2008.

[4] Murray, John B. et al. " New evidence on the origin of Phobos' parallel grooves from HRSC Mars Express (PDF; 475 kB)," Lunar and Planetary Science XXXVII (2006).

[5] stropage.eu: The Martian moon Phobos is slowly falling apart - Astropage.eu / Wissenschaftsnachrichten. In: astropage.eu. Retrieved January 25, 2016 .