New Mars Crater Spotted In Before-and-After Pictures

The Bad Astronomer (563217) writes "The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spotted a new crater on the surface of Mars, and, using before-and-after pictures, the impact date has been nailed down to less than a day — it happened on or about March 27, 2012. The crater is 50 meters or so in size, and surrounded by smaller craters that may have been caused by smaller impacts due to the incoming meteoroid breaking up. Several landslides were spotted in the area as well, possibly due to the shock wave of the impact."

Comments

Meters?

[ArcadeMan]

For those who are metric-impaired, 50 meters equals 1968.5 inches.

Re:Meters?

[Existential Wombat]

Gas or Electric meters?

Re:Meters?

[FatLittleMonkey]

Actually, 1968.50694 ± 393.700787 inches. The 50m is to one significant figure, so "50 or so" would be 50 ± 10m. (Normally I'd say ± 5, but since 50 is a midpoint in base ten, there may be greater rounding than is strictly standard.)

Re:Meters?

[Cryacin]

You, sir, have doomed us all.

Curiosity

[PPH]

Anything for Curiousity to see? Dust in the atmosphere? Seismic waves? The top of the meteor slowly unscrewing?

Being picky ; photographed != "spotted"

[RockDoctor]

In other words, this crater was spotted less than a day after the impact that formed it!

It was photographed at less than a day old, but since it's only being reported now, there was probably a period of some days or even weeks between the photos being taken, downloaded to Earth, decoded, and analysed with a before/ after filter. Then follow-up photos with other orbiters, preparing reports etc ... I'd guess that it wasn't much more than a week between the photography and realisation (the actual "spotting") ; but I won't go into philosophical pickiness over whether the "spotting" was done by the before-after comparison algorithm or the human reviewing the list of before-after differences.

It would be informative (if The Bad Astronomer is reading) to know how many false before-after differences turn up each day or orbit? Tens, hundreds? The origins would be informative too - weather, cosmic ray hits, transient glints off Tripods?

Distance from Curiosity

[ralphius]

Does anybody know how far away this brand new crater is from Curiosity? I would have thought such recently exposed sub-surface rock would have been fascinating for the geologists/scientists controlling the rover to study?

Re:Distance from Curiosity

[gstoddart]

My guess ... the chances of a random impact they've identified being anywhere near the rovers across an entire planet are probably pretty small.

Even "close" on these scales would likely be further than the rovers have traveled in the entire time they've been there.