Airy-0
Sign in to saveAiry-0 is a crater inside the larger Airy Crater on Mars, whose location historically defined the Martian prime meridian. It is about 0.5 km (0.3 mile) across and lies within the dark region Sinus Meridiani, one of the early albedo features to be identified on Mars. In 2018, the IAU Working Group on Cartographic Coordinates and Rotational Elements recommended setting the longitude of the Viking 1 lander (47.95137° west) as the reference line. This definition maintains the position of the center of Airy-0 at 0° longitude, within the tolerance of current cartographic uncertainties.
Key facts
- Crater data.titlecolor
- FA8072
- Crater data.title
- Airy-0
- Crater data.caption
- Airy-0 Crater from MRO; also, from A to C, Mariner 9, Viking 1 and Mars Global Surveyor (Airy-0 is the larger crater in top center of each frame).
- Crater data.region
- Inside Airy Crater
- Crater data.coordinate_title
- Coordinates
- Crater data.globe
- Mars
- Crater data.eponym
- Sir George Biddell Airy
via Wikipedia infobox
~2 min read
Encyclopedic overview
3 sectionsContents
- Notes
- References
- External links
Airy-0 is a crater inside the larger Airy Crater on Mars, whose location historically defined the Martian prime meridian. It is about 0.5 km (0.3 mile) across and lies within the dark region Sinus Meridiani, one of the early albedo features to be identified on Mars. In 2018, the IAU Working Group on Cartographic Coordinates and Rotational Elements recommended setting the longitude of the Viking 1 lander (47.95137° west) as the reference line. This definition maintains the position of the center of Airy-0 at 0° longitude, within the tolerance of current cartographic uncertainties.
Merton Davies tied this crater into an extensive geodetic control network of the planet Mars based on Mariner 9 and earlier photographs. The Mariner 9 Geodesy/Cartography Group proposed that the prime meridian of Mars be defined by the center of Airy-0, which was selected by Harold Masursky, Gerard de Vaucouleurs, and Merton Davies at a Group meeting on 14 August 1972.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Airy-0” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.
Gallery (2)
On the map
3 mapped locations