Submission Date
4-24-2023
Document Type
Paper- Restricted to Campus Access
Department
Physics & Astronomy
Adviser
Kassandra Martin-Wells
Committee Member
Casey Schwarz
Committee Member
Christopher Sadowski
Committee Member
Kassandra Martin-Wells
Department Chair
Casey Schwarz
Project Description
The cause of asymmetries in ray systems created by impact craters has long remained a mystery. Sabuwala et al. (2018) showed that a relation exists between the creation of prominent rays, impactor diameter, and the number of prominent valleys present at the impact site. We have developed a data pipeline to process and analyze the data required in methods as outlined by Sabuwala et al. (2018) to analyze pre-impact topography and predict impactor diameters using topographic data and prominent ray counts. This has allowed us to validate their original findings and construct order-of-magnitude predictions of hypothetical impactor diameters for the lunar craters Kepler, Ohm, Tycho, Jackson, and Copernicus and have found that the method is particularly sensitive to the model parameters chosen. These findings might be used to constrain such scaling laws and probe lunar geological features.
Recommended Citation
Powers, Liam, "A Semi-Automated Data Pipeline for Predicting Lunar Impactor Diameters From Pre-Impact Topography and Ray Geometry" (2023). Physics and Astronomy Honors Papers. 9.
https://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/physics_astro_hon/9
