You don't need to look through a telescope for long to realise that the solar system can be a violent place. Aside from the intense energy of our sun, most of the planets and moons wear the scars of numerous crashes.
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That's hardly surprising given the bits of cosmic debris that are flung around at high speed and occasionally smack into each other. The result could be anywhere from a barely visible scratch to complete destruction.
In some cases such as the gas giants Jupiter and Saturn, the planet swallows up their assailants without leaving a trace.
Phobos, however, had a near-death experience when it collided with another object (the crash scene report doesn't say, but perhaps one party failed to indicate).
In any event, at 22 kilometres across, Phobos is the larger of Mars's two moons. While that makes it a mere speck in the scheme of things, the result is a beautiful, softly dimpled crater about half as wide as the moon itself.
Phobos suffered extensive fracturing and a peculiar grooved terrain that striates much of the surface.
On top of that, the moon is pockmarked by enough small craters to be worthy of some of the nations' worst roads.
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What makes it more striking (pardon the pun), is the spray of colours ranging from silvery-white to deep orange, red and almost black, as if it were the target of a malicious paint bomb.
Modelling by scientists suggest that Phobos survived the impact only because its composition allowed it to absorb the energy without splitting apart.
Stickney Crater is named after the American mathematician, Chloe Angeline Stickney (1830-1892).
Stickney was a gifted mathematician whose heavy computational work helped her husband Asaph Hall to discover the Martian moons, Phobos and its smaller sibling, Deimos.
She studied at an American progressive college where women and free African Americans could earn a degree. Although she became a professor at NYCC, she had to give up her career after she married.
Stickney is also remembered as an ardent supporter of women's rights and for her work to abolish slavery.
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