Today’s a special day for astronomy enthusiasts: It’s both Asteroid Day and Meteor Watch Day. To celebrate, we’re at the rim of a 560-foot-deep crater with a 3,900-foot diameter, creatively called "Meteor Crater." (Scientists call it Barringer Crater, for the name of the man who first theorized it was a meteorite-impact crater.) Some 50,000 years ago, parts of an asteroid fell to Earth here, in a location just east of Flagstaff, Arizona. And today, we can see just how devastating the collision must have been to leave a basin so large.
The aftermath of a meteorite
Today in History
More Desktop Wallpapers:
-
Ready for takeoff
-
No, it s not a leaf. Happy Look-alike Day
-
Pollinator Week
-
Coming home to roost
-
Manatee Awareness Month
-
Baltic Sea, Estonia
-
Inhale and exhale, it’s Yoga Day
-
A lunar lantern celebration
-
Wallabies at sunrise, Australia
-
World Teachers Day
-
Montreux, Switzerland, and all that jazz
-
Innerdalsvatna Lake, near Ålvundeidet, Norway
-
A crush in Lavaux
-
A glimpse of the Blue Forest
-
Navajo Bridge in Marble Canyon
-
FOR FOREST by Klaus Littmann
-
Dreaming of the Tyrrhenian Sea
-
These patterns tell a story
-
Duomo Santa Maria del Fiore, Florence
-
Mountain goats at Glacier National Park in Montana
-
Pollinator Week
-
World Bicycle Day
-
American Wetlands Month
-
Celebrating Pi Day
-
National Park Week: Canyonlands National Park, Utah
-
Travels to the Oregon deep
-
Guiding ships to safety
-
Short-eared owl
-
In the belly of Fat Bear Week
-
Gazing down on planet Earth