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Crust

Astronomy Critical PointCrux

Definition: crust: The outermost layer of a planet, i.e. the surface. On Earth, we live on the crust.
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Smooth Crust
In this image of fourth large moon, , the trailing hemisphere is visible. This region was protected from billions of years of impact-gardening, which obliterated old surface features in the leading hemisphere.

Crust
The crust ranges from 5-35 km in depth. It is composed of silicon-based rocks. The crust-mantle boundary occurs as two physically different events.

crust
the thin, outermost geological layer of a planet, moon, or asteroid
cryovolcanism ...

crust Layer of the Earth which contains the solid continents and the seafloor.

Crust: The outermost layer of a planet or moon, above the mantle.
Dark mantle deposits: Deposits of dark glass on the Moon, possibly products of volcanic fire fountaining.

Crustal plate boundaries (Source)
Age of the Sea Floor
If the crustal plates are pulling apart at boundaries like the Mid-Atlantic Ridge (see the line of earthquake epicenters down the center of the Atlantic in the preceding figure), ...

The Crust - plate system
The inside of the Earth isn't so exciting; the real fun doesn't start until you get to the surface - the crust! The crust is part of the lithosphere and is located above the mantle.

FUSION CRUST - Melted glassy exterior of a meteorite that forms when it passes through Earth’s atmosphere. Friction with air can raise a meteorite’s surface temperature to 4800 K.

fusion crust
The melted exterior of a meteorite caused by the intense heat of entering the Earth's atmosphere.
G
Gagarin, Yuri
The first human in space, a Soviet aboard Vostok 1 in 1961.

Oceanic crust is the part of Earth's lithosphere that surfaces in the ocean basins. Oceanic crust is primarily composed of mafic rocks, or Sima ....
descends beneath another tectonic plate, deep-focus earthquake
Deep focus earthquake ...

Crust: The moon's surface is dry, dusty and rocky. The rocky crust is about 37 miles (60 km) thick on the side of the moon that faces Earth and about 62 miles (100 km) thick on the opposite side of the Moon.

crust - the rigid, rocky outer surface of the Earth, composed mostly of basalt and granite. The crust is thinner under the oceans.
inner core - the solid iron-nickel center of the Earth that is very hot and under great pressure.

Crustal Plate Boundaries
(Courtesy NGDC)
Plate tectonics involves the formation, lateral movement, interaction, and destruction of the lithospheric plates.

CRUST
The crust is the outermost layer of the lithosphere (the solid part of the Earth consisting of the crust (broken into plates) and the upper mantle).
...

The crust is up to 70 km thick and starts only 6 km beneath the ocean, where the temperature is approximately 1050°C.

The crust probably is a thick layer of water ice, and the mantle probably is ice and silicates. At some places the crust has spread and separated.

The crust is broken up into chunks called plates with densities around 3. Oceanic plates are made of basalts (cooled volcanic rock made of silicon, oxygen, iron, aluminum, & magnesium) and are about 6 kilometers thick.

The crust is separated from the mantle by the Mohorovicic discontinuity, and the thickness of the crust varies: averaging 6 km under the oceans and 30­50 km on the continents.

Sealed crustless sandwichSealed KnotSealed Orders
Sealed recordSealed roundSealed server
Sealed systemsSealedMediaSealeo ...

Exploring Crustal Material from a Mystery Planet (PDF, 109 KB)
Geologic Landforms of Mars
Geologic Landforms of Venus
Geologic Landforms Seen on Aerial Photos
Introduction to Photogeologic Mapping
Photogeologic Mapping of the Moon ...

Mercury's crust is thought to be 100-200 km thick. One distinctive feature of Mercury's surface are numerous narrow ridges, some extending over several hundred kilometers.

The Moon's crust averages 68 km thick and varies from essentially 0 under Mare Crisium to 107 km north of the crater Korolev on the lunar far side.

However, the crust is not a rigid sphere. It is segmented into plates, thousands of kilometers in extent but only about 50 km thick. The plates float on top of a hot and soft layer and this theory is called the plate tectonics.

13. The lunar crust is thicker on one side.
14. The pilot
15. Mariner 10 ...

So, the Moon's crust (outer layer) is thinner on the near side than on the far side.

This image shows crustal thickness on the Moon as derived from gravity data. Click the image for more details.
Dissemination of Results ...

faults (Photoglossary of Volcanic Terms - USGS) Faults are fractures or fracture zones in the Earth's crust along which one side moves with respect to the other.

the abundance of Ni in meteorites or the crustal abundance of oxygen. Also used for the for relative average content, e.g., the order of abundance of elements in the Earth's crust is O, Si, AL, Fe, Ca, etc. Used for element abundance.

The GRS was designed to record the spectrum of gamma rays emitted by the radioactive decay of elements contained in the moon's crust and elements in the crust bombarded by cosmic rays and solar wind particles.

On our planet, the crust is really a set of lighter "plates'' floating on heavier molten lava. Where the plates buckle or collide, mountain ranges can form; where they rub together, zones of earthquakes and volcanoes occur.

Diffraction of seismic waves provided the first clear-cut evidence for a lunar crust, mantle, and core analogous to those of the earth. The lunar crust is about 45 mi (70 km) thick, making the moon a rigid solid to a greater depth than the earth.

Continental Crust
Population of the Earth
Biggest Continent
Google World Maps
Find my House from Space
Google on Earth
Pictures of Waterfalls
The Arctic Circle
Pictures of Islands
What is the Most Remote Place on Earth?

The increasing pressure with depth causes phase changes in crustal rocks at depths of roughly 60 kilometres, marking the boundary of the upper mantle.

This eucrite has been broken open, revealing the distinction between its black, shiny, and smooth fusion crust and its light-colored interior. The specimen is about 7 cm from left to right. Photo by J. Kurtzmen ...

Mars has its rocky and dusty crust, which is 200 kilometers thick, then an extremely deep rocky stratum layer, and finally a metallic core or nucleus.

Fission hypothesis Early speculation proposed that the Moon broke off from the Earth's crust because of centrifugal forces, leaving a basin - presumed to be the Pacific Ocean - behind as a scar.

Earth’s crust (geology)
Earth’s mantle
Equator (geography)
Hubble Space Telescope (HST) (astronomy)
atmosphere (gaseous envelope)
atmospheric electricity
climate (meteorology)
dust
dwarf planet (astronomy)
geochemical cycle ...

3 billion, a torrential rain fell that turned to steam upon hitting the still hot surface, then superheated water, and finally collected into hot or warm seas and oceans above and around cooling crustal rock leaving sediments.

This caused the differentiation into crust, mantle, and core, with the lighter silicates moving up and outward to form the mantle and crust and the heavier elements, mainly iron and nickel, ...

Nimmo, and Craig O'Neill of Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, adapted a model O'Neill had previously designed for the Earth's crust for Enceladus' cold ice crust.

Europa has an ice crust criss-crossed with dark lanes and is thought to have a liquid water mantle. The dark lanes have lengths from a few km to 1000's of km. Some are straight and others are curved.

On the Earth, the sea floor spreads apart slowly at mid-oceanic ridges as new crust flows up from Earth's hot interior.

Such shifts and related processes create earthquakes, sudden readjustments of the Earth's crust. The shifts rarely exceed a few meters, but they cause elastic waves to propagate throughout the body of the Earth.

(a) The relative amount of a given element among others; for example, the abundance of oxygen in the Earth's crust is approximately 50% by weight.

This suggested the theory that the Moon was produced when a huge planetesimal, perhaps as big as Mars, slammed into the still-forming Earth, ripping material out of its crust.

The nucleus of the comet is thought to be a conglomeration of various ices and dirt with a dark crust. As the comet approaches the Sun, the crust absorbs heat and some of the ice begins to turn to gas.

They occur along fractures in the crust and may extend for many kilometres. Lava, usually of basaltic composition, is ejected relatively quietly and continuously from the fissures and forms enormous plains or plateaus of volcanic rock.

Although we see only the top of the crust, by studying mountain ranges, volcanoes, basins, canyons, and fault zones, scientists can infer the structure of the rest of the crust, mantle, and even the core of a planet.

the theory that the Earth's continental and oceanic crust and outermost portion of the mantle is fractured into large plates that move relative to each other. Convective currents in the mantle provide the driving force for this motion.

The primary objective of MARSIS is to map the distribution of water and ice in the upper layers of the Martian crust.

A geological term that refers to a fracture or a break in a hard surface like the Earth's crust. This area is a zone of weakness and may be the site of earthquakes or volcanoes.

Astronomers know from other long-term observations, mostly done at Jodrell Bank, that a pulsar is made up largely of a neutron superfluid, with a solid crust.

We would also make an entry in a notebook noting the meteorite's size and the amount of thin, glassy coating called fusion crust. Picking it up with tongs, we'd place it in a bag with a number tag and tape it closed.

Mars has a diameter of 6794 km or 0.53 Earth diameter and has a mass of ∼10% that of Earths. The crust of Mars is a single thick (varying between 40 - 70 km thick) tectonic plate.
Cross-sections of Venus, Earth and Mars
Credit: Swinburne ...

Chasms that split the midocean rises where the crustal plates move apart.
Midocean Rise
One of the undersea mountain ranges that push up from the seafloor in the center of the oceans.

Mars has a core of iron in the middle, and a thick crust on the outside.
Time taken to orbit the Sun: 687 days.
Mars has 2 moons.

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24. Arachnoids
On Venus, one of a number of round networks of fractures in the crust, resembles spider webs.
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25. Archaeoastronomy
The study of astronomy by ancient peoples.

rift valley: A long, straight, deep valley produced by the separation of crustal plates.
ring galaxy: A galaxy that resembles a ring around a bright nucleus; believed to be the result of a head-on collision of two galaxies.

Mercury Has Wrinkles
As the Mercury's iron core cooled, it contracted, or shrunk. This caused its rocky crust to become wrinkled. Scientists call these wrinkles Lobate Scarpes.

See also: Earth, Planet, Time, Solar, Light