English

Ceres and the Terrestrial Planets Impact Cratering Record

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics 2018-04-11 v1

Abstract

Dwarf planet Ceres, the largest object in the Main Asteroid Belt, has a surface that exhibits a range of crater densities for a crater diameter range of 5-300 km. In all areas the shape of the craters' size-frequency distribution is very similar to those of the most ancient heavily cratered surfaces on the terrestrial planets. The most heavily cratered terrain on Ceres covers ~15% of its surface and has a crater density similar to the highest crater density on <1% of the lunar highlands. This region of higher crater density on Ceres probably records the high impact rate at early times and indicates that the other 85% of Ceres was partly resurfaced after the Late Heavy Bombardment (LHB) at ~4 Ga. The Ceres cratering record strongly indicates that the period of Late Heavy Bombardment originated from an impactor population whose size-frequency distribution resembles that of the Main Belt Asteroids.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1804.01229,
  title  = {Ceres and the Terrestrial Planets Impact Cratering Record},
  author = {Robert G. Strom and Simone Marchi and Renu Malhotra},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1804.01229},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

published in Icarus (March 2018)

R2 v1 2026-06-23T01:13:18.162Z