Constructing Stratigraphic Relationships Using Secondary Craters: A Lunar Test Case

Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy

Scientific paper

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Scientific paper

Secondary cratering is a possible contaminant of small crater distributions used to date young terrains in the Solar System. As such, much attention has been paid to identifying the effect of the secondary population on the cratering record of various bodies. Our technique utilizes 100m resolution circular polarization ratio (CPR) maps generated from 2.38 GHz Arecibo radar data of the lunar South Pole to distinguish secondary craters from small primaries at large distances from the primary impact. High levels of CPR are indicative of blocky ejecta tails and can be used not only to identify secondaries in this "far field” regime, but can also indicate the associated primary crater by the tail direction. We apply this method to a region on the floor of Newton-A crater ( 60 km diameter), where our refined counts identify 56 secondary craters with diameters above 400m (43.8% of the total population) associated with the primary crater Tycho (85 km diameter)—some 1000 km to the north.
In addition to providing information on the relative importance of secondary and primary craters at small diameters, this method of secondary crater identification provides valuable information about the terrains on which they are emplaced. Secondary craters associated with a single primary event form simultaneously, therefore serving as a convenient layer around which stratigraphic relationships can be constructed—particularly if the age of the primary is well constrained. For extensive secondary networks, the semi-global reach of this layer provides a way to compare in a standardized way terrain units separated by thousands of kilometers. As a demonstration of this technique, we employ a combination of crater morphology and CPR tail analysis to determine the ages of features on the floor of Newton-A relative to the layer of Tycho secondaries present there. Funding by NASA's Planetary Astronomy program is acknowledged.

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