crater

The crater of a long-dead volcano in Iceland, which has filled with water to form a crater lake. Iceland's system of volcanoes, many of them active, has been created as a result of the movement in this area of two of the Earth's tectonic plates.

Crater on the northern Elysium Planitia on Mars. It was formed by the impact and subsequent explosion of a meteorite and is a little more than twice the diameter of the Barringer Crater in Arizona, which has a diameter of 1.2 km/0.7 mi.

Bowl-shaped depression in the ground, usually round and with steep sides. Craters are formed by explosive events such as the eruption of a volcano or the impact of a meteorite.

The Moon has more than 300,000 craters over 1 km/0.6 mi in diameter, mostly formed by asteroid and meteorite bombardment; similar craters on Earth have mostly been worn away by erosion. Craters are found on all of the other rocky bodies in the Solar System.

Craters produced by impact or by volcanic activity have distinctive shapes, enabling geologists to distinguish likely methods of crater formation on planets in the Solar System. Unlike volcanic craters, impact craters have raised rims and central peaks and are circular, unless the meteorite has an extremely low angle of incidence or the crater has been affected by some later process.

Crater

Small constellation of the southern hemisphere, represented as a cup; it is associated in mythology with Hydra and Corvus.