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Over 950 impact craters have been identified on Venus. The largest crater in this view, Kaikilani, is 20 kilometers across and about 1 kilometer deep; the smaller unnamed crater is 9 kilometers across. Kaikilani is a typical complex crater on Venus. The conical central peak formed when the floor of the crater rebounded upward during the late stages of crater formation. The scarps along the rim are terraces formed when portions of the rim collapsed along concentric faults. Because these two craters have undergone nearly identical stages of degradation, they may have formed simultaneously due to the impact of a binary asteroid (comprised of two asteroids very close to or touching each other) or an asteroid with a small satellite, such as Ida. Magellan
image F-MIDR 35S163. Right click here to download a high-resolution version of the image (918 KB)
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