Impact crater in WA found through Google Earth

[gary]

The Sydney Morning Herald reports a possible ancient meteor impact crater
discovered near Newman in W.A. by a government geologist who stumbled
across it on Google Earth.

Article and images here -

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2008/03/25/1206207065556.html

Best Regards

Gary Kopff
Mt. Kuring-Gai

[sheeny]

Cool! Good to see there are still discoveries to be made!

Al.

[Tamtarn]

Really interesting article. Great to see new discoveries. Thanks for posting Gary :thumbsup:

D & B

[fringe_dweller]

awesome, what a buzz, i remember the first and only other one of this type of discovery, when google earth first came out, http://www.astroseti.org/impacts.php

whenever i read a great story like that, i always check universe today to see how long ago it had already been on there already! and it didnt fail this time, 19th of mar they had it, from an 18th mar article, yet the aussie article is dated 25th march! they're freakin spooky at UT :eyepop: :lol: its like they just know maaaaan :scared:

[danielsun]

Very interesting! Thanks for the links Gary and Kearn.;)

[Starman73]

I'm glad to see that our Government geologists are able to make these kinds of discoveries from the comfort of their offices in front of their computers instead of getting out there with their picks etc and doing it the old fashioned way.

Good on them though, and good to see that Google Earth is usefull to someone.

[gary]

Many Moons ago, before the ghoulish popularity of a certain Australian made horror film,
I drove out to the Wolfe Creek meteorite crater site down the Tanami Road.

Whilst exploring the rim of the crater, my intrepid traveling companion managed
to slip and fall onto a spinifex bush. After the painful experience of becoming a human
echidna, rest assured she would be the first to extol the virtues of arm chair crater
exploration rather than having to go through all that prickly field work.

Best Regards

Gary

[Ric]

Great article Gary, and to think I was doing geological surveys in that area over twenty years ago with a notebook, pencil and geo-hammer.

Probably walked right past it. :doh::lol:

[gary]

Thanks Ric,

Some might say it sounds like you missed out big time, but I would imagine
the rest of us would camp in the bottom of it for a week and still not be
any the wiser. :)

I would guess it was probably because you were too busy looking down for all
the stuff they love to dig up and put on freight trains out there in that part of the
world. :)

Best Regards

Gary

[Ric]

Hi Gary, looking at the map we would have been following the river bed as the surveys in those days were mainly for gold.

Cheers

[Jen]

:) dam i knew i wanted to download google earth for a reason :shrug:

[Lert]

Thanks for posting that gary.. Interesting find. Google Earth peeps might like to look at Veevers Crater, a little 50 metre dia. bloke out in the Great Sandy desert @ 22 58 12S 125 22 21E. Now that would be an interesting trip..

[Moonboy]

I'm going to go on Google Earth right now and see if I can find one.:lol:
Gus:P

[Jen]

Im wif you :thumbsup:
hey your not that far away from me cool :P

[janoskiss]

You don't need to download Google Earth if you don't want to. Same image and map data can be viewed via maps.google.com in a web browser. Follow this link to crater (http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=newman+western+australia&ie=UTF8&ll=-23.036968,119.683363&spn=0.015126,0.027122&t=h&z=16).

[Jen]

;) ok cool thanks im on my way there now :thumbsup:

[CarlJr]

Hello From Carl Farnsworth Jr Gus Creek Alberton Montana USA. COOL site, Thank You!. First posting and saw the crater. The WA fooled me, thought home state, not AUS. Anyhoo when I viewed the image it seemed to me that about in the center, boarderd by the two creek/treelines is the faint outline of a circle. The human eye/brain at work fooling it self or chained craters?

[programmer]

Google Earth is great for that 3d feel though.. it really adds.. er, another dimension? :P

[gary]

Hi Carl,

Thanks for the post and welcome to IceInSpace.

Greetings to you there in Montana.

Indeed, in this context, WA is the abbreviation for West Australia rather than
Washington state. To give you some idea how big the state of West Australia
is, it's about five times larger than Texas and is the second largest sub-national
entity in the world. That makes for a lot of real estate to Google. :)

With regards the other feature you describe, could you possibly copy a version
of the image showing where the original crater is and annotate it with an X using
something like PhotoShop to show where you see the additional feature?
If you keep the image relatively small, you can attach it as part of your
post.

Once again, welcome!

Best Regards

Gary