{"id":921749,"date":"2026-10-09T10:56:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-09T10:56:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/921749\/"},"modified":"2026-10-09T10:56:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-09T10:56:11","slug":"apod-2026-october-9-stickney-crater-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/921749\/","title":{"rendered":"APOD: 2026 October 9 \u2013 Stickney Crater"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p-md margin-0 media-detail-hero__description\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tExplanation: Stickney Crater, the largest crater on the martian moon Phobos, is named for <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Angeline_Stickney\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Chloe Angeline Stickney<\/a> Hall, <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/anastronomerswi03hallgoog\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">mathematician and<\/a> wife of astronomer Asaph Hall. Asaph Hall discovered both the <a href=\"https:\/\/science.nasa.gov\/apod\/?date=201030\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Red Planet&#8217;s moons<\/a> in 1877. Over 9 kilometers across, Stickney is nearly half the diameter of Phobos itself, so large that the impact that blasted out the crater likely came close to shattering the tiny moon. This <a href=\"http:\/\/hirise.lpl.arizona.edu\/phobos.php\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">enhanced-color image<\/a> of Stickney and surroundings was recorded by the HiRISE camera onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter as it passed within some six thousand kilometers <a href=\"https:\/\/science.nasa.gov\/apod\/?date=170721\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">of Phobos<\/a> in March of 2008. Even though the surface gravity of <a href=\"https:\/\/solarsystem.nasa.gov\/moons\/mars-moons\/phobos\/in-depth\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">asteroid-like Phobos<\/a> is less than 1\/1000th Earth&#8217;s gravity, streaks suggest loose material slid down inside the crater walls over time. Light bluish regions near the crater&#8217;s rim could indicate a relatively freshly exposed surface. The origin of the curious grooves along the surface is mysterious but may be related to tidal stresses experienced by <a href=\"https:\/\/science.nasa.gov\/apod\/?date=220703\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">close-orbiting<\/a> Phobos or <a href=\"http:\/\/adsabs.harvard.edu\/abs\/2016GeoRL..4310595B\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">the crater-forming impact<\/a> itself.<\/p>\n<p>Tomorrow&#8217;s picture: farside\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Explanation: Stickney Crater, the largest crater on the martian moon Phobos, is named for Chloe Angeline Stickney Hall,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":921750,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[407743,64,63,128,285],"class_list":["post-921749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-apod","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/921749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=921749"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/921749\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/921750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=921749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=921749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=921749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}