Popigai crater is one of the largest on Earth

Popigai crater is one of the largest on Earth Today’s Image of the Day from NASA Earth Observatory features the Popigai crater in northern Siberia, which is the fourth largest verified impact crater on Earth.

Popigai crater is one of the largest on Earth The crater was formed about 36 million years ago by an asteroid between three and five miles wide that was moving at a speed of about 12 miles per second. 

The depression sinks about 500 to 650 feet below the surrounding land. It is located about 100 kilometers from the Laptev Sea coast. North America is a continent entirely within the Northern Hemisphere and almost all within the Western Hemisphere. It can also be described as the northern subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Caribbean Sea, and to the west and south by the Pacific Ocean. Because it is on the North American Tectonic Plate, Greenland is included as part of North America geographically. North America covers an area of about 24,709,000 square kilometers (9,540,000 square miles), about 16.5% of the Earth’s land area and about 4.8% of its total surface. North America is the third-largest continent by area, following Asia and Africa, and the fourth by population after Asia, Africa, and Europe.

The image was created using Blue Marble data, a cloud-free composite of monthly observations from NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) observations. 

Image Credit: NASA Earth Observatory 

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By Chrissy Sexton, Earth.com Staff Writer