Caloris Basin

Caloris Planitia (Latin calor, genitive: caloris, = heat, heat and Planitia = area level, eg " heat level " or " heat - pool " ) is 1,550 km in diameter of the largest known impact craters on the not yet fully explored surface of Mercury.

The Caloris Planitia was so named because, by the resonance between Mercury's rotation and orbital motion, at every second passage of the sun next point of the orbit is the longitudinal position of the pelvis is aligned with the sun.

The Caloris basin was probably formed by the impact of an asteroid about 100 km or even 150 km diameter 3.9 billion years ago; probably penetrated this deep into the crust of a Mercury, possibly mantle rocks were exposed. It is believed that through the energy of impact about 500,000 km ² area of ​​the opposite side of the planet set out, so that auffalteten mountains with altitudes above 1,800 m there. The impact was so violent that a plurality of concentric circular walls were raised by the seismic oscillations around the point of impact and exited from the interior of the planet lava.

The inside it fairly flat structured, large and circular basin, which is located north of the Equator, is bordered by the Caloris Montes, an irregular mountain ring ( or a mountain range ), up to 2 km altitude reached its peak is just about 1 km.

The interior of the basin appears to have been filled by magma from deep within, like the Mare basins of the moon. This lava plains have a peculiarly wrinkled texture that is so far only known from the Mercury, and clearly have fewer craters than other regions of Mercury. The bottom of the basin characterize many concentric furrows and ridges that resemble a target and give it resemblance to the approximately comparable large multi- ring system on the moon, in the center of the basin Mare Orientale is.