Asteroid Pictures

Posted by Trust me in , , on Wednesday, August 12, 2009

If you are thinking that it would be impossible for an asteroid to hit Earth and wipe out civilization you are living in a dream world. There have been lots of impacts in the past, and there will be many more in the future. Here are some pictures of our planet's scars by asteroid impacts.

Update: It has been brought to my attention that not all of these craters were caused by asteroids. See comments below for further evaluation.



Aorounga picture
Manicouagan picture


roterkamm impact
lonar impact
vredefort impact

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 12, 2009 at 10:22 AM and is filed under , , . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response.

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    # by Anonymous - August 13, 2009 1:40 AM

    While some of the above images represent impacts by asteroids, not all of them are. So to say that these are examples of asteroid impacts is incorrect. Barringer Crater (the first image) is a confirmed meteorite impact, as are Aorounga Crater (the third image), Roter Kamm (the seventh image), & Lonar (the eight image).

    Manicouagan Reservoir (the fourth image) is an asteroid impact. Clearwater Lakes (the sixth image) is an asteroid impact and there is evidence to suggest it was actually a pair of asteroids. The final image, of Vredefort Crater, is also an asteroid, and is the largest verified impact crater on Earth.

    Spider Crater, the fifth image, is still unknown, and research is still being done to better understand this object, including identifying what type of object caused it. Scientists haven't conclusively said if it's an asteroid, comet, or meteorite yet. I don't recognize the second image, or the name the status bar pulls up when I hover over the image, so can't help you on that one.

    It's good that you're pointing out an important aspect of Earth's past, and that it is always a possibility in the future, but if you are going to point out specifically asteroid impacts, you might want to use images of just asteroid impacts.

  2. gravatar

    # by Trust me - August 13, 2009 7:59 AM

    Thanks for the comment. I'll go ahead and update the post.