![Wikilaudevilseskers](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/05/Wikilaudevilseskers.jpg)
Lau Crater is an impact crater in the
Mare Australe quadrangle
The Mare Australe quadrangle is one of a series of 30 quadrangle maps of Mars used by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) Astrogeology Research Program. The Mare Australe quadrangle is also referred to as MC-30 (Mars Chart-30). The quadr ...
of Mars, located at 74.4°S latitude and 107.8°W longitude. It is 104.9 km in diameter. It was named after Danish astronomer
Hans E. Lau
Hans-Emil Lau (16 April 1879 – 16 October 1918) was a Denmark, Danish astronomer.
He started his observational career during his studies at Copenhagen University. After completing his degree in 1906 he worked at the Urania, the Treptow Obser ...
, and the name was approved in 1973 by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature (WGPSN).
The curved ridges observed on the crater floor are believed to be
eskers
An esker, eskar, eschar, or os, sometimes called an ''asar'', ''osar'', or ''serpent kame'', is a long, winding ridge of stratified sand and gravel, examples of which occur in glaciated and formerly glaciated regions of Europe and North Ameri ...
, which form when streams run under a glacier.
[Namowitz, S., D. Stone. 1975. Earth Science The World We Live In. American Book Company. New York.] These eskers would indicate a large, thick sheet of ice once covered this region. Dark lines in close view image are
dust devil tracks
Martian dust devils (dust devils on Mars) were first photographed by the Viking orbiters in the 1970s. In 1997, the Mars Pathfinder lander detected a dust devil passing over it. In the first image below, photographed by the Mars Global Surveyor, ...
.
See also
*
List of craters on Mars
__NOTOC__
This is a list of craters on Mars. Impact craters on Mars larger than exist by the hundreds of thousands, but only about one thousand of them have names. Names are assigned by the International Astronomical Union after petitioning by ...
References
{{Geography of Mars
Mare Australe quadrangle
Impact craters on Mars