An impact crater is a circular depression in the surface of a solid astronomical object formed by the hypervelocity impact of a smaller object. In contrast to volcanic craters, which result from explosion or internal collapse, impact craters typically have raised rims and floors that are lower in elevation than the surrounding terrain. Lunar impact craters range from microscopic craters on lunar rocks returned by the Apollo program and small, simple, bowl-shaped depressions in the lunar regolith to large, complex, multi-ringed impact basins. Meteor Crater is a well-known example of a small impact crater on Earth.
The Chicxulub crater is an impact crater buried underneath the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. Its center is offshore, but the crater is named after the onshore community of Chicxulub Pueblo. It was formed slightly over 66 million years ago when a large asteroid, about ten kilometers in diameter, struck Earth. The crater is estimated to be 180 kilometers in diameter and 20 kilometers in depth. It is the second largest confirmed impact structure on Earth, and the only one whose peak ring is intact and directly accessible for scientific research.
Cleopatra, initially called Cleopatra Patera, is an impact crater on Venus, in Maxwell Montes.
Mead is an impact crater on Venus named in honor of the cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead.
Golubkina is a crater on Venus.
Dickinson crater is located at 74.6 degrees north latitude and 177.2 east longitude, in the northeastern Atalanta Region of Venus. It is 69 kilometers (43 mi) in diameter. The crater is complex, characterized by a partial central ring and a floor flooded by radar-dark and radar-bright materials. Hummocky, rough-textured ejecta extend all around the crater, except to the west. The lack of ejecta to the west may indicate that the impactor that produced the crater was an oblique impact from the west. Extensive radar-bright flows that emanate from the crater's eastern walls may represent large volumes of impact melt, or they may be the result of volcanic material released from the subsurface during the cratering event.
Mozart is a crater on Mercury, named by the IAU in 1976 after Austrian composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
Buck is a crater in the Navka region of Venus. It has the terraced walls, flat radar-dark floor, and central peak that are characteristic of craters classified as "complex". The central peak on its floor is unusually large. Flow-like deposits extend beyond the limits of the coarser rim deposits on its west and southwest. Like about half of the craters mapped by Magellan to date, it is surrounded by a local, radar-dark halo.
Wanda is a crater in the Akna Montes on Venus first mapped first by the Soviet Venera 15/16 mission in 1984. It was formed by the impact of an asteroid. The crater has a rugged central peak and a smooth radar-dark floor, probably volcanic material. The crater does not appear to be much deformed by later crustal movement that uplifted the mountains and crumpled the plains. Material from the adjacent mountain ridge to the west, however, appears to have collapsed into the crater. Small pits seen to the north of the crater may be volcanic collapse pits a few kilometers across.
Riley is a crater on Venus.
Eminescu is a peak ring crater on Mercury 125 kilometers (78 mi) in diameter. Since there are very few later craters superposed on it, Eminescu appears to be a young crater formed around one billion years ago. It has a transitional morphology between larger more complex impact basins like Raditladi and smaller simpler central peak craters.
Verdi is an impact crater on the planet Mercury. It was named after Italian Romantic composer Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901) in 1979, as recognized by the International Astronomical Union. The crater's extensive ejecta blanket and secondary crater field are superposed on plains materials and older craters.
Moody is an impact crater on Mercury.
Complex craters are a type of large impact crater morphology.
Scarlatti is a pit-floored crater on Mercury, which was discovered in 1974 by the Mariner 10 spacecraft. It has a prominent peak ring, and it is one of 110 peak ring basins on Mercury. The crater floor is covered by the smooth plains material. The crater displays an arcuate collapse feature along the northeastern peak ring. The size of the pit, which was first noticed in MESSENGER images obtained in January 2008, is 38 × 12 km. Such a feature may have resulted from collapse of a magma chamber underlying the central peak ring complex of the crater. The collapse feature is an analog of Earth's volcanic calderas. Scarlatti is thought to have the same age as the Caloris basin.
Rachmaninoff is an impact crater on Mercury. This basin, first imaged in its entirety during MESSENGER's third Mercury flyby, was quickly identified as a feature of high scientific interest, because of its fresh appearance, its distinctively colored interior plains, and the extensional troughs on its floor. The morphology of Rachmaninoff is similar to that of Raditladi, which is one of the youngest impact basins on Mercury. The age of Raditladi is estimated at one billion years. Rachmaninoff appears to be only slightly older.
Aksakov is a crater on Mercury. It has a diameter of 174 kilometers. Its name was adopted by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) on April 24, 2012. Aksakov is named for the Russian author Sergey Aksakov, who lived from 1791 to 1859 C.E.
Ariadne Crater is a crater on Venus. Its central peak serves as the prime meridian of the planet, a status formerly held by Eve Crater until relocated.
A multi-ringed basin is not a simple bowl-shaped crater, or a peak ring crater, but one containing multiple concentric topographic rings; a multi-ringed basin could be described as a massive impact crater, surrounded by circular chains of mountains resembling rings on a bull's-eye. A multi-ringed basin may have an area of many thousands of square kilometres.
A peak ring crater is a type of complex crater, which is different from a multi-ringed basin or central-peak crater. A central peak is not seen; instead, a roughly circular ring or plateau, possibly discontinuous, surrounds the crater's center, with the crater rim still farther out from the center.
