The Hiawatha Impact Crater
- Visualizations by:
- Cindy Starr
- View full credits
Starting from a global view, this visualization zooms into Inglefield Land in northwest Greenland and shows the location of Hiawatha Glacier. The surface of the ice sheet is then faded away to show the impact crater beneath the ice sheet. A red cylinder shows the best-fit rim of the impact crater and a measuring stick shows the diameter as more than 31 kilometers across. The size of the crater is compared to the cities of Washington, DC and Paris, France.
This video is also available on our YouTube channel.
The Hiawatha impact crater was first suspected to exist in the summer of 2015, from examination of a compilation of Greenland's sub-ice topography radar measurements made by NASA over two decades. The visualizations of the subsurface shown below are derived from a spring 2016 airborne survey by Germany's Alfred Wegener Institute, using a new ultrawideband radar sounder developed by the Center for Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets at The University of Kansas. Subsequent helicopter visits to the deglaciated terrain in front of Hiawatha Glacier by scientists from the Natural History Museum in Denmark recovered sediment samples from the main river that discharges water from beneath Hiawatha Glacier, through the northwestern rim breach. Laboratory examination revealed that these sediment samples contained shocked quartz and elevated platinum-group-element concentrations, both signs that the sediment records evidence of the impact of an iron asteroid more than one kilometer wide. The Hiawatha impact crater is potentially one of the youngest large impact craters on Earth.
In the visualizations below, the elevation of the topography of the bed, the ice surface and the radar curtains have been exaggerated ten times in order to better illustrate their structure.
This visualization shows how Germany's Alfred Wegener Institute's (AWI) Polar 6 aircraft (a DC-3T) collected radar data over the Hiawatha impact crater. Ice-penetrating radar sends radio waves downward into the ice sheet and measures the energy reflected back from within the ice sheet and the ground beneath. The radar data detects layers in the ice generated by climate events in the past. The radar data ("radargrams") is then displayed on curtains in the location where it was observed showing the layers in the ice.
As the plane flies inland over Hiawatha Glacier, the ice sheet is cut away, leaving the radargram on the interior cutting plane. At this point, half of the depression of the Hiawatha impact crater is visible. A green grid fades in over the surface of ice sheet showing the location of the flights that collected the radar data in spring 2016 by AWI. The entire ice-sheet surface fades away and the full crater is visible as arrows point out the locations of the peaks in the central uplift and a red cylinder shows the best-fit rim of the impact crater. Radargram "curtains" fade on and are subsequently removed two at a time to allow examination of the structure of the ice that fills the crater. Note that the lower layers of ice near the crater floor appear disturbed, while the upper layers appear smooth and undisturbed.
This video is also available on our YouTube channel.
This visualization begins by showing the bed of Hiawatha impact crater beneath the Greenland ice sheet. The surface of the ice sheet slowly fades on over the impact crater and we pull away from the Hiawatha glacier showing its location in Inglefield Land in northwest Greenland. The animation ends with a view of the Arctic, Greenland and Europe.
This video is also available on our YouTube channel.
This visualization shows the bed topography of the Hiawatha impact crater lying beneath the Greenland Ice Sheet near Inglefield Land. This visualization is a subset of the first visualization above, but without the wall indicating the crater rim, the size scale, or the city insets that were shown for size comparisons.
This video is also available on our YouTube channel.
This visualization begins by showing the bed topography beneath the Greenland Ice Sheet and the Hiawatha impact crater. The topography in this region was measured using ice-penetrating radar mounted on an aircraft. The radar system sends radio waves downward into the ice sheet and collects the data reflected back from within the ice sheet and the ground beneath. The reflected data depicts the historical layers in the ice that were generated by the annual seasonal cycles of growth and melt. Here the radar data is displayed on curtains in the location where it was observed showing the layers in the ice that record the history of the ice sheet similar to the way that rings on a felled tree show the growing seasons in a tree trunk. Curtains of radar data closest to the camera are sequentially removed as we fly through the crater basin in order to give a close-up view of the interior layers of ice.
This visualization is identical to a subset of the second one above showing radar data displayed on curtains except that this version has no labels added.
This video is also available on our YouTube channel.
This region of the Hiawatha impact crater has been studied using ice-penetrating radar. The ice radar sends out radio waves into the ice sheet and collects the data reflected back from within the ice sheet and the ground beneath. The reflected data depicts the historical layers in the ice generated by the annual seasonal cycles of growth and melt. The radar data is then displayed on curtains in the location where it was observed showing the layers in the ice that record its history. This visualization shows the bed beneath the Hiawatha Glacier and some of the radar curtains. These layers visible in the radar curtain record the history of the ice sheet from the oldest ice near the bed to the recent year's layers found near the surface. Note the disturbance in the layers found close to the bed.
This video is also available on our YouTube channel.
This visualization begins by flying over the Greenland Ice Sheet heading northwest towards the coast of Greenland and Nares Strait. As we near the Hiawatha Glacier, a square section of the ice surface fades away to show the topography of the Hiawatha impact crater beneath the ice sheet.
This video is also available on our YouTube channel.
Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio
Visualizers
- Cindy Starr (GST) [Lead]
- Ernie Wright (USRA)
- Greg Shirah (NASA/GSFC)
- Lori Perkins (NASA/GSFC)
Scientists
- Joe MacGregor (NASA/GSFC)
- Kurt Kjær (University of Copenhagen)
- Mark Fahnestock (Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks)
Producer
- Jefferson Beck (KBRwyle)
Project support
- Eric Sokolowsky (GST)
- Joycelyn Thomson Jones (NASA/GSFC)
- Leann Johnson (GST)
Technical support
- Ian Jones (ADNET)
- Laurence Schuler (ADNET)
Datasets used in this visualization
SHIZUKU (GCOM-W1) 10 km Daily 89 GHz Brightness Temperature (Collected with the AMSR2 sensor)
Credit: AMSR2 data courtesy of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).
See more visualizations using this data setSHIZUKU (GCOM-W1) 10 km Daily Sea Ice Concentration (Collected with the AMSR2 sensor)
Credit: AMSR2 data courtesy of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).
See more visualizations using this data setAlfred Wegener Institute (AWI) Airborne Radar Survey of Hiawatha Glacier
Airborne radar survey of the region around the Hiawatha glacier.
See more visualizations using this data setWorldView-1, WorldView-2, and WorldView-3, GeoEye-1 ArcticDEM 5-meter Digital Surface Model Release 4 (A.K.A. ArcticDEM 5-meter Digital Surface Model Release 4)
Dataset can be found at: https://www.pgc.umn.edu/data/arcticdem/
See more visualizations using this data setLandsat-8 True Color (A.K.A. Band Combination 2,3,4) (Collected with the OLI sensor)
Terra and Aqua BMNG (A.K.A. Blue Marble: Next Generation) (Collected with the MODIS sensor)
Credit: The Blue Marble data is courtesy of Reto Stockli (NASA/GSFC).
Dataset can be found at: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/BlueMarble/
See more visualizations using this data setCanadian Digital Elevation Data
Greenland Mass Conservation Dataset - Bed Topography
Greenland Mass Conservation Dataset - Surface Elevation
Hiawatha Glacier Gridded Bed Topography
Credit: Hiawatha Glacier Gridded Bed Topography data is courtesy of Mathieu Morlighem (UCI).
See more visualizations using this data setTerra and Aqua Land Surface Temperature (Collected with the MODIS sensor)
TERRA MODIS Mosaic of Greenland (MOG) Image Map (Collected with the MODIS sensor)
Note: While we identify the data sets used in these visualizations, we do not store any further details nor the data sets themselves on our site.
Related pages
Greenland's Hiawatha Crater
July 27, 2019, 8 p.m.
Read moreThis visualization shows the location of the Hiawatha Glacier near Inglefield Land in northwest Greenland. The surface of the ice sheet fades away to show the impact crater discovered beneath the ice sheet. A red cylinder shows the best-fit rim of the impact crater and a measuring stick shows that the diameter of the crater is more than 31 kilometers across. The size of the crater is compared to the cities of Washington, DC and Paris, France.The visualization also shows how the scientists from Germany fade on and are subsequently removed two at a time to allow examination of the structure of the ice that fills the crater. Note that the lower layers of ice near the crater floor appear disturbed, while the upper layers appear smooth and undisturbed. Subsequent helicopter visits to the deglaciated terrain in front of Hiawatha Glacier by scientists from the Natural History Museum in Denmark recovered sediment samples from the main river that discharges water from beneath Hiawatha Glacier, through the northwestern rim breach. Laboratory examination revealed that these sediment samples contained shocked quartz and elevated platinum-group-element concentrations, both signs that the sediment records evidence of the impact of an iron asteroid more than one kilometer wide. The Hiawatha impact crater is potentially one of the youngest large impact craters on Earth. || A still image showing the Greenland Ice Sheet and the Hiawatha Glacier. || A still image showing the ice sheet removed in the region around the Hiawatha Glacier. The bed topography under the ice clearly shows the Hiawatha crater.
SVS Demo Reel
July 25, 2019, 11 a.m.
Read moreThis is the SVS Demo Reel presented at SIGGRAPH 2019 in Los Angeles, CA.
Massive Crater Discovered under Greenland Ice
Nov. 14, 2018, 8:50 a.m.
Read moreIt took the combined efforts of an international team of scientists to unravel the mystery of the Hiawatha crater. This video shows how that discovery came together. Complete transcript available. || An international team of researchers that includes a NASA glaciologist has discovered a 19-mile-wide meteorite impact crater hiding beneath more than half a mile of ice in northwest Greenland. This is the first impact crater of any size ever found under the polar ice sheets.The group, led by researchers from the Centre for GeoGenetics at the Natural History Museum of Denmark, University of Copenhagen, worked for the past three years to verify their discovery, which was initially made in 2015 using NASA data. Their finding is described in a study published on Nov. 14 in the journal Science Advances. The crater is roughly a thousand feet deep and more than 19 miles in diameter, encompassing an area slightly larger than that comprised inside the Capital Beltway around Washington, D.C. Its dimensions place it among the 25 largest impact craters on Earth. The crater formed when an iron meteorite more than half a mile wide smashed into northwest Greenland – but the timing of when the event happened remains a key question and one the researchers want to answer next. The authors put the range between less than 3 million years ago and as recently as less than 13,000 years ago. The resulting depression has since been covered by ice.This narrated video outlines the discovery and includes data visualizations which can be found here: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/4572Footage and co-production courtesy of the National History Museum of Denmark/University of Copenhagen, the Underground Channel, and the Alfred Wegener Institute.Music credit: s Goddard Space Flight Center/Cindy Starr || A Landsat satellite mosaic of the Hiawatha Glacier region.