Gosses Bluff

Gosses Bluff, about 205 km west of Alice Springs, in the Northern Territory, Australia, is one of the most significant impact structures in the world. This crater is thought to have been made by the impact of a large comet or meteorite, about 143 million years ago. It has been estimated that the original crater would have been about 22 km in diameter, and that the object which made the crater would have been traveling at 40 km/sec. The structure we now see is the result of erosion - the crater would originally have had an outer raised rim, now removed by erosion, and a prominent central peak. The core of the original crater is now represented by a ring of low hills. The perspective view was created by draping a band 7-3-1 RGB composite image over an ASTER-derived DEM.