| Luna crater | |
|---|---|
  | |
| Impact crater/structure | |
| Diameter | 1.2 kilometres (3⁄4 mi) |
| Country | India |
| State | Gujarat |
| District | Kutch district |
| Municipality | Luna village in Bhuj taluka |
Luna crater is an impact crater at Luna village in Bhuj taluka of Kutch district of Gujarat, India. The crater is located in a low-lying, soft, flat area and appears unconventional and deceptive when compared to other craters in India, which are usually found on hard, rocky surfaces. [1]
Rock fragments and glasslike materials found at the site indicate a meteorite impact, the date of which has tentatively been put at around 2000 BCE. [2] The crater, located in the Rann of Kutch, is circular, with a diameter of 1.2 kilometres (3⁄4 mi), and its lowest point is only about 2 metres (6.6 ft) above sea level. [3]
Crater is visibly a kilometre wide, but the satellite radar imagery shows it is spread over a five kilometres radius. Since it lacks the characteristics of a typical impact site, it is a unique site in the world, it has a very low depth to diameter ratio. A round lake of 1 km2 in area and 2 meter in depth lies in the centre of crater, which remains dry during summers. Crater depression is covered with thick vegetation of thorny Acacia species (Acacia nilotica and Prosopis juliflora). Rim of the crater, with up-turned beds and shutter cone, has no hard rocks. X-ray analysis of the materials adhering to meteorite fragments carried out by George Mathew, Earth Science Department, the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay revealed stishovite and coesite, the high pressure polymorphs of silica, which confirms the impact origin of the crater. [1]
Among the various objects/products expected in an impact site, fragments appearing like metallic meteorites that are dark, heavy and magnetic with spherical cavities are found at the rim of the suspected crater, and glassy objects comparable to tektites have been recovered. [4]
Luna Dham Temple lies in the north end of the crater.
The satellite data indicates that there could be a few more craters within the Kutch, which are hidden by the subsequent denudational activities. [1]
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.
A meteorite is a solid piece of debris from an object, such as a comet, asteroid, or meteoroid, that originates in outer space and survives its passage through the atmosphere to reach the surface of a planet or moon. When the original object enters the atmosphere, various factors such as friction, pressure, and chemical interactions with the atmospheric gases cause it to heat up and radiate energy. It then becomes a meteor and forms a fireball, also known as a shooting star; astronomers call the brightest examples "bolides". Once it settles on the larger body's surface, the meteor becomes a meteorite. Meteorites vary greatly in size. For geologists, a bolide is a meteorite large enough to create an impact crater.
Meteor Crater or Barringer Crater is a meteorite impact crater about 37 mi (60 km) east of Flagstaff and 18 mi (29 km) west of Winslow in the desert of northern Arizona, United States. The site had several earlier names, and fragments of the meteorite are officially called the Canyon Diablo Meteorite, after the adjacent Canyon Diablo.
Manicouagan Reservoir is an annular lake in central Quebec, Canada, covering an area of 1,942 km2 (750 sq mi). The lake island in its centre is known as René-Levasseur Island, and its highest point is Mount Babel. The structure was created 214 (±1) million years ago, in the Late Triassic, by the impact of a meteorite 5 km (3 mi) in diameter. The lake and island are clearly seen from space and are sometimes called the "eye of Quebec". The lake has a volume of 137.9 km3 (33.1 cu mi).
The Great Rann of Kutch is a salt marsh in the Thar Desert in the Kutch District of Gujarat, India. It is about 7500 km2 in area and is reputed to be one of the largest salt deserts in the world. This area has been inhabited by the Kutchi people.
The Sudbury Basin, also known as Sudbury Structure or the Sudbury Nickel Irruptive, is a major geological structure in Ontario, Canada. It is the third-largest known impact crater or astrobleme on Earth, as well as one of the oldest. The crater was formed 1.849 billion years ago in the Paleoproterozoic era.
The Brent crater is an impact crater in both the geographic township of Deacon, Unorganized South Nipissing District and the municipal township of Papineau-Cameron in Nipissing District, northeastern Ontario, Canada, located north of Cedar Lake in northern Algonquin Provincial Park. It is 3.8 kilometres (2.4 mi) in diameter and the age is estimated to be ca. 453 million years (Ordovician). The crater can be reached using Brent Road, 32 kilometres (20 mi) south of Ontario Highway 17.
Mistastin crater is a meteorite crater in Labrador, Canada which contains the roughly circular Mistastin Lake. The lake is approximately 16 km (9.9 mi) in diameter, while the estimated diameter of the original crater is 28 km (17 mi). The age of the crater is calculated to be 36.6 ± 2 million years (Eocene).
The Vredefort impact structure is one of the largest verified impact structures on Earth. The crater, which has since been eroded away, has been estimated at 170–300 kilometres (110–190 mi) across when it was formed. The remaining structure, comprising the deformed underlying bedrock, is located in present-day Free State province of South Africa. It is named after the town of Vredefort, which is near its centre. The structure's central uplift is known as the Vredefort Dome. The impact structure was formed during the Paleoproterozoic Era, 2.023 billion years ago. It is the second-oldest known impact structure on Earth, after Yarrabubba.
Kutch district, officially spelled Kachchh, is a district of Gujarat state in western India, with its headquarters (capital) at Bhuj. Covering an area of 45,674 km2, it is the largest district of India. The area of Kutch District is larger than the entire area of states like Haryana (44,212 km2) and Kerala (38,863 km2). The population of Kutch is about 2,092,371. It has 10 talukas, 939 villages and 6 municipalities. The Kutch district is home to the Kutchi people who speak the Kutchi language.
The Shiva crater is the claim by paleontologist Sankar Chatterjee and colleagues that the Bombay High and Surat Depression on the Indian continental shelf west of Mumbai, India represent a 500-kilometre (310 mi) impact crater, that formed around the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary. Chatterjee and colleagues have claimed that this could have contributed to the K-Pg extinction event. Other scholars have questioned the claims, finding that there is no evidence of an impact structure.
Lonar is a town and municipal council in Buldhana district of Vidarbha region of the Indian state of Maharashtra. The town is the headquarter of Lonar taluka and is located near Mehkar.
Kebira Crater is the name given to a circular topographic feature that was identified in 2007 by Farouk El-Baz and Eman Ghoneim using satellite imagery, Radarsat-1, and Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) data in the Sahara desert. This feature straddles the border between Egypt and Libya. The name of this feature is derived from the Arabic word for "large", and also from its location near the Gilf Kebir region in southwest Egypt. Based solely on their interpretations of the remote sensing data, they argue that this feature is an exceptionally large, double-ringed, extraterrestrial impact crater. They suggest that the crater's original appearance has been obscured by wind and water erosion over time. Finally, they speculated that this feature might be the source of the yellow-green silica glass fragments, known as "Libyan desert glass", that can be found across part of Egypt's Libyan Desert. They neither conducted any fieldwork at this feature nor studied any samples collected from it. However, the Kebira Crater is currently not listed in the Earth Impact Database. Field trips to investigate the feature have found no supporting evidence. The "central uplift" clearly retains the horizontal bedding of the surrounding sandstone tableland, providing clear evidence against a possible impact origin.
Iturralde Crater is an 8-kilometre (5.0 mi) diameter circular geophysical feature in Madidi National Park in the Bolivian portion of the Amazon Rainforest, first identified from Landsat satellite imagery in 1985. The structure is located in a remote area in the Abel Iturralde Province of La Paz Department and was visited by researchers in 2002. Based on the presence of millions of glass beads, it has been hypothesised that the structure was created in the Late Pleistocene by the air burst of a non-impacting meteorite, similar to the Tunguska event in 1908.
Lonar Lake, also known as Lonar crater, is a notified National Geo-heritage Monument, saline, soda lake, located at Lonar in Buldhana district, Maharashtra, India. Lonar Lake is an astrobleme created by a meteorite impact during the Pleistocene Epoch. It is one of only four known hyper-velocity impact craters in basaltic rock anywhere on Earth. The other three basaltic impact structures are in southern Brazil. Lonar Lake has a mean diameter of 1.2 kilometres (3,900 ft) and is about 137 metres (449 ft) below the crater rim. The meteor crater rim is about 1.8 kilometres (5,900 ft) in diameter.
Ramgarh crater, also known as Ramgarh structure, Ramgarh Dome and Ramgarh astrobleme, is a meteor impact crater of 3.5 kilometres (2.2 mi) diameter in Kota plateau of Vindhya range located adjacent to Ramgarh village in Mangrol tehsil of Baran district in Rajasthan state of India. When formally accepted as the third crater in India, its diameter size would be between the two already confirmed craters in India - Dhala in Madhya Pradesh with 14 km diameter and Lonar in Buldhana district of Maharashtra with 1.8 km diameter.
Complex craters are a type of large impact crater morphology.
Dhala crater is a crater formed by an asteroid impact. It is situated near Bhonti village in Pichhore block of Shivpuri district of Madhya Pradesh state in India. It is the largest crater in India, and between the Mediterranean and Southeast Asia. The diameter of the structure is estimated at 3 kilometres (1.9 mi), while other sources estimate its diameter to be 11 km diameter. It is the second such crater found in India, after Lonar lake.
The Lona Wildlife Sanctuary is situated around a lagoon called Lonar Lake, which was created by a meteorite impact about 50,000 years ago. The diameter of the Lonar lake is 1.83 km. This sanctuary located in Lonar taluka of Buldhana district of Maharashtra. The sanctuary is spread over an area of 365.16 Hectares. It includes the 77.69 Ha Lonar lake. The forest around the lake is mainly Southern Tropical dry Deciduous Forest. In 2020 the Lonar lake was declared as Ramsar site. The foul smell of hydrogen sulfide gas is common near the lake water.
