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A Youthful Crater in the Cydonia Colles Region

Nov. 27, 2015
The central portion of this image is dominated by a sharp-rimmed crater that is roughly 5 kilometers in diameter. On its slopes, gullies show young (geologically recent) headward erosion, which is the lengthening of the gully in the upslope direction.

The central portion of this image is dominated by a sharp-rimmed crater that is roughly 5 kilometers in diameter. On its slopes, gullies show young (i.e., geologically recent) headward erosion, which is the lengthening of the gully in the upslope direction.

This crater is also remarkable for another reason. This image is part of a stereo pair, and the anaglyph of these images shows that the bottom of the crater contains a small mound. This mound hints at a possible complex crater, with the mound being a central uplift. Complex craters as small as this one are uncommon and such examples may provide clues to the lithology of the rocks underground and possibly to the impact process itself.

This is a stereo pair with ESP_025716_2200.

The University of Arizona, Tucson, operates HiRISE, which was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington.

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