Contains:  Solar system body or event
Copernicus Crater, Bruce Rohrlach

Copernicus Crater

Acquisition type: Lucky imaging
Copernicus Crater, Bruce Rohrlach

Copernicus Crater

Acquisition type: Lucky imaging

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Description

Copernicus Crater located in eastern Oceanus Procellarum.

Formed during the Copernican period, it may have been created by debri from the breakup of the parent body of asteroid 495 Eulalia around 800 million years ago. Asteroid 495 Eulalia is the remnant of a minor planet (100-160km diameter) that orbited the sun in a position very near the 3:1 Jupiter orbital resonance. Breakup of this parent body is thought to have caused the Copernicus impact from a fragment of the 495 Eulalia parent proto-planet.



The Copernicus impact crater formed by an impactor with a mass of around 50x that of the Chicxulub inpact on earth in the Gulf of Mexico that marked the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T boundary) extinction event associated with the demise of the dinosaurs and the ascent of mammels in the new ecological niches.

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Copernicus Crater, Bruce Rohrlach