NASA has released a stunning photo of a unique crater on Mars with strange, luminous edges that give it the appearance of a human footprint.
Russia Today said yesterday that the crater in the image, which is known as Airy-0, is a depression 0.3 miles (0.5 kilometers) wide located inside the much larger “Eri” crater, which is 27 miles (43.5 km) wide. The image, which was released on September 8, 2021, was taken using the high-resolution imaging scientific experiment on the NASA Mars Exploration Orbiter, and the agency shared it in an Instagram post on the 11th of this month.
In 1884, astronomers chose the larger Erie crater to mark Mars’ prime meridian, the zero degree longitude where east meets west.
On Earth, the prime meridian is marked by the Royal Greenwich Observatory in the United Kingdom, as it marks the boundary between the eastern and western hemispheres.
The crater “Erie” is named following the British astronomer Sir George Biddle Erie, who built the telescope at the Royal Greenwich Observatory and who first discovered the huge crater.
The astronomers chose “Eri” to mark the main meridian of Mars, because it was large enough to be seen by telescopes at the time, and “NASA” representatives wrote on “Instagram”: “With high-resolution images available, a smaller feature was needed.” -0 to replace Erie as the main meridian sign, as it was the correct size, but required drastic changes to existing maps. The crater’s bright ridges are known as atmospheric transverse ridges (TARs), Abigail Freeman, a planetary scientist and deputy project scientist on NASA’s Curiosity rover, told Live Science.