Kebira Crater

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Kebira Crater

Kebira Crater (Arabic: فوهة كبيرة) is an impact crater (astrobleme) in the Sahara. The center of the crater lies in Libya, but the eastern edge extends into Egypt. The crater's appearance has been obscured by wind and water erosion over time, and its discovery from satellite images was announced in March 2006 by researchers Dr. Farouk El-Baz and Dr. Eman Ghoneim from the Center for Remote Sensing at Boston University.

The crater has two rings and is 19 miles (31 kilometres) in diameter. The largest previously known crater in the region, the Oasis crater in Libya, is approximately half the size, with a diameter of approximately 11 miles (18 km). It is estimated that the meteorite that created the Kebira Crater would have been roughly 0.75 miles (1 km) in diameter. The date of impact has not been determined, but it may have caused the dispersal of yellow-green silica fragments, known as "desert glass", that can be found across Egypt's Great Sand Sea.

The name of the crater is derived from the Arabic word for "large", and also from its location near the Gilf Kebir ("Great Barrier") region in southwest Egypt.