Nāwahī (crater)
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Nāwahī is a
crater A crater is a landform consisting of a hole or depression (geology), depression on a planetary surface, usually caused either by an object hitting the surface, or by geological activity on the planet. A crater has classically been described ...
on Mercury. Nāwahī crater is located within the large
Caloris basin Caloris Planitia is a plain within a large impact basin on Mercury, informally named Caloris, about in diameter. It is one of the largest impact basins in the Solar System. "Calor" is Latin for "heat" and the basin is so-named because the Su ...
, near the western rim. The unusual dark material creating a halo around Nāwahī makes this crater of special interest, as the dark material likely represents rocks with a different chemical and mineralogical composition than those of the neighboring surface. The crater is named after Hawaiian patriot and painter Joseph Nāwahī. Hollows are present in Nāwahī, mostly along the terraces of the crater rim. A confirmed ''dark spot'' is present in Nāwahī.Zhiyong Xiao, Robert G. Strom, David T. Blewett, Paul K. Byrne, Sean C. Solomon, Scott L. Murchie, Ann L. Sprague, Deborah L. Domingue, Jörn Helbert, 2013. ''Dark spots on Mercury: A distinctive low-reflectance material and its relation to hollows''. Journal of Geophysical Research Planets.
doi.org/10.1002/jgre.20115
/ref> This dark spot is associated with the hollows.


References

Impact craters on Mercury {{Mercury-planet-stub