Herschel (Martian crater)

Herschel

Martian impact crater Herschel based on THEMIS image
Planet	Mars
Coordinates	14°54′S 130°00′E / 14.9°S 130°E / -14.9; 130Coordinates: 14°54′S 130°00′E / 14.9°S 130°E / -14.9; 130
Diameter	304.5 km
Eponym	William Herschel & John Herschel

Herschel is a 304 kilometer Impact Basin in the Martian southern hemisphere, at 14.5°S, 130°E, located in the Mare Tyrrhenum region of Mars and is inside Terra Cimmeria. The crater is jointly named after the seventeenth/eighteenth century father and son astronomers William Herschel and John Herschel.

Nearby named craters include the much smaller Luqa to the southeast, also further south is the slightly smaller Müller, to the north is the slightly smaller Knobel and Robert Sharp craters and northeast are the Lasswitz-Wien crater pair.

Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft originally photographed fields of dark sand dunes within Herschel. Images from the NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter showed that sand dunes on the floor of the Herschel crater are not stationary (as previously believed), but moved over time. Images from photos taken by the Orbiter's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) on March 3, 2007 and December 1, 2010 show clear shifting of dunes and ripples. Research published in Icarus stated that the dunes in Hershel Crater moved 0.8 m in a time span of 3.7 Earth-years. Also, it was determined that dune ripple moved 1.1 m in that time period.