NASAs Landsat 7 satellite captured this image of Pingualuit Crater on August 17, 2002. The outside rim is covered with a jumbled heap of large fragments of granite blocks. Previously, only two small samples of impact melt rocks were known. The airport is on top of the 1000 hill to the right (south) of the village. In the morning we were fogged in. It is 3.44 kilometres or 2.14 miles in diameter. 137-154. The target rocks are crystallineand some bedrock structure is visible in the north. The rock maybe got a third of the way down to the water!! Strange Fish | This little char lives in Pingualuk Lake, par | Flickr Salluit (Inuit word for skinny people) is situated on a bay surrounded by hills and overlooking Hudson Straight. This included leading us to the only safe descent to the enclosed lake. The lake within the crater only became visible when we climbed over the flat peak of the rim. 1992. It has distinguishable attributes. The crater is 3.44km (2.14mi) in diameter, and is estimated to be 1.4 0.1 million years old (Pleistocene). The crater is exposed to the surface, rising 160m (520ft) above the surrounding tundra, and is 400m (1,300ft) deep. It is August and yes that is snow in the background! 1951c. Asteroid Day: These Lakes Are Actually Impact Craters | Time Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, v. 51, pp. Although they keep some distance from humans they are easily visible and leave many tracks. It is one of the most transparent lakes in the world, with a Secchi disk visible more than 35m (115ft) deep. My video and still cameras were constantly active. I climbed down the steep inner slope and dipped my foot in the freezing crystal-clear water. The park is managed by the Kativik Regional Government. I crawled on the ground and looked at the miniscule. The only species of fish in the crater lake is the Arctic char. During my ground expedition to the crater a few years later, I actually did try and throw a rock into the water from the top of the crater rim. Documenting this crater was the main purpose of our trip up to northern Quebec. Chuck reported seeing a mouse on the crater rim. World War II pilots often used the almost perfectly circular landmark as a navigational aid.[5]. Sandwiched in the middle of the faintly laminated silts and sandy mud, the researchers found two distinct and separate layers containing organically rich material that most likely date back well before the Holocene, representing earlier ice-free periods. 1964. Pingualuit Crater, Nunavik Province, Canada - ASTER Image Gallery It is in fact a very young and small compared to most. Earth's greatest purely vertical drop at 4,101 feet. The physical characteristics of the craters diameter and erosion-reducedrim thus placed it neatly with the other terrestrial meteorite craters on Baldwins curve. NASA image created by Jesse Allen, using Landsat data provided by the University of Marylands Global Land Cover Facility. Although glaciated, this relatively young structure retains an upraised rim and is surrounded by a faint zone of deformation extending 3 km from the rim. During the short preliminary investigation no meteorites (or diamonds) were found among the boulders on the rim or on the surrounding plain. The crater is 3.44 km (2.14 mi) in diameter, and is estimated to be 1.4 0.1 million years old (Pleistocene). Pingualuit Crater holds a lake about 267 meters (876 feet) deep. The discovery of the crater led to the development of a program at the Dominion Observatory in Ottawa to search for additional impact craters on the Canadian Shield, and the development of valuable criteria by which they could be authenticated. I am not a hiker. In 2007 Prof. Pienitz journeyed to the Pingualuit Crater near the Hudson Strait in hopes of unlocking 120,000 years worth of secrets about climate change. . Named Pingualuit Crater in 1999, this crater's identification eventually led to the identification of more than 20 other impact structures in eastern Canada. The distinctive term for this site serves as the name of an astonishingly pristine lake. When we arrived at the vicinity of the crater, the height of the rim and the depth of the crater were exemplified when the lake that filled the crater suddenly became visible from behind the crater rim only when we were about a kilometer away! Pingualuit impactite originated from dike bodies in the crater rim, was eroded and carried 3-4 km north of the crater by water action (Grieve 2006). An airstrip was constructed at the crater which meant that we could make it to the crater by simply chartering an airplane from Kuujjuaq. We can learn about the fragility of the climate system, and how it responds to external forces.. METEORITICS, vol. [2] The crater and the surrounding area are now part of Pingualuit National Park. Follow us on social media to add even more wonder to your day. Meen, V. B., Chubb crater, Ungava, Quebec. Pingualuit crater - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Every weekday we compile our most wondrous stories and deliver them straight to you. In 2008, I flew my airplane to Kuujjuaq to catch a Twin Otter flight to the crater. We were forced to descend to an altitude of 1500 feet above the ground to keep under the cloud layer. Winner will be selected at random on 08/01/2023. Enrichments of iron, nickel, cobalt, and chromium found in impact melt samples suggest that the meteorite was chondritic in nature. The salinity level is less than 3 ppm, which is very low in comparison to the 500 ppm salinity level of the Great Lakes, and its one of the clearest lakes in the world. Its hard for me to imagine living in such isolation, but the Inuit have lived here for centuries. The crater's name derives from an Inuktitut term meaning pimplesevoking the hills landform of the surrounding area. An expedition led by James Boulger in 1986 collected a small rock sample[8] from the area surrounding the New Quebec Crater. An analysis of these rocks also revealed planar deformation features as well as the composition of the meteorite itself. Pingualuit is neither the largest or the oldest impact crater. With its 14 spectral bands from the visible to the thermal infrared wavelength region and its high spatial resolution of about 50 to 300 feet (15 to 90 meters), ASTER images Earth to map and monitor the changing surface of our planet. The Arctic tundra is characterized by the total absence of trees and discontinuous vegetation. On the way, I passed over the Manicouagan Crater, one of Earths largest, and recognizable on maps and from the air by a large circular lake surrounding a mountain of impact-melted rock. Circumnavigating the crater rim took a full day of walking, with constant maneuvering over large boulders. I first learned about Pingualuit when I was a boy reading a government map of Quebec. I vowed that someday I would see that crater for myself. Ships still bring in supplies during the relatively short ice-free period in the summer. An exhilarating ambience in a unique setting! It has also provided useful information about climate changes during the last ice age. [3] The lake has no inlets or apparent outlets, so the water accumulates solely from rain and snow and is lost only through evaporation. And we did land with the predicted fuel safety margin. My Aerial Explorations of Terrestrial Meteorite Craters. I smelled things. The samples they found contain the remains of diatoms and other organic material, suggesting that they represent ice-free conditions and possibly interglacial periods. From where we stood, it was over 3 km across to the opposite side of the rim. After three years we finally found a way to Pingualuit which we regard as the Shangri-la of impact craters. The bulge was a result of the explosive impact of the meteorite that had fractured the rocks surrounding the area and increased their volume. By the time I reached Kuujjuaq Airport, a heavy cloud layer was descending, but I managed to land in Marginal Visual Flight Rules conditions. 05:15 15:15: Overflight of the Pingualuit Crater. NASA's Landsat 7 satellite captured this image of Pingualuit Crater on August 17, 2002. It is slightly larger than the smallest crater on the Moon that is observable from our planet (Meen 1951). It has also provided useful information about climate changes during the last ice age," writes NASA's Earth Observatory. In 2005 I contacted Charles ODale to make a trip to the crater. The rim rose continuously during the 2.5 km walk from Lac Laflamme to the crater. Slickenside is a smoothly polished surface caused by frictional movement between rocks along the two sides of a fault. We had a good workout walking back up that hill! Without this fuel stop we would not have made it back to our point of departure, Kuujjuaq, as aviation fuel was not available north of Kuujjuaq. According to the Planetary and Space Science Centre (PASSC) at the University of New Brunswick in Canada, there are 190 confirmed impact structures on Earth. The melt rocks have a normative mineralogy corresponding to 70% quartz, orthoclase and albite and are compositionally similar. In addition, it is possible to participate in the construction of an igloo and spend a night there. This Canadian protected area related article is a stub. Precipitation is the only source of water, and loss of water can only be the result of evaporation. The sediment core contains mostly faintly laminated silts or sandy mud with frequent pebble-size rock fragments, which is typical of deposits found in water bodies covered by an ice sheet. In the Nunavik region of northern Quebec, not far from Ungava Bay, lies a perfectly round oddity known as the Pingualuit Crater. There were almost no insects. This igloo-shaped landmark in Iqaluit serves as the seat of the Diocese of the Arctic. These craters all produce negative gravity fields due to the low density fragmental rock underlying them and the expanded crustal rocks forming their rims (Innes 1964). He named it Chubb Crater after the sharp-eyed prospector. It is a unique natural site that I hope visitors in the future will appreciate. Only by carrying extra fuel on board were we able to spend less than 20 minutes orbiting the Pingualuit Impact Crater and safely make it to one of the remote airports in the area (see below for Terry Peters description of our flight over the crater). The exposed bedrock of the Pingualuit Meteorite Craters target rock consists of a mlange of metamorphosed, Archean plutonic rocks cut by rare basic dykes (Shoemaker, 1962). Then Ken Currie, of the Geological Survey of Canada (GAC), found impactites on the raised rim of the crater (at the closest part of the rim in this image). 1.9km wide and with a 100m high rim, the best estimates for the age of Tenoumer Crater place it between 10,000-30,000 years . D = 0.1083d2 + 0.6917d + 0.75 Some of the most incredible, beautiful, and strange places in the Atlas. ), the ball would only make it two thirds of the way to the water! Previously called - New Quebec Crater, Ungava Crater & Chubb Crater. The Pingualuit Crater is of special importance because its discovery and identification as an impact crater gave rise to the identification of 26 authenticated impact craters/structures on the Canadian Shield (Grieve, 1991). 10 Earth impact craters you must see - MSN Here I am at Salluit refuelling the aircraft from one of the containers of aviation fuel that we transported with us. That explained the low cloud layer! The water in Lake Pingualuk cannot sustain commercial exploitation and must remain untouched. Forest fires: access restored to all territories|Details, Socit des tablissements de plein air du Qubec, Password Beyond that, the sediments in this crater lake escaped being scoured away by glaciers during the Pleistocene Ice Age. I personally made two trips to the crater during our four day visit. When Chubb Craters diameter of 11,000 feet (3,353 m) issubstituted into the equation, it gives a depth of 1,500 feet (457 m) for the crater (i.e., from theaverage top of the rim to the bottom of the lake). But more thrilling than any of them were my visits to Pingualuit (the name the New Quebec Crater had been given in 1999), the subject of my promise to myself all those years ago. In winter it is possible to do dog sledding or ski touring, March and April would be the best months. After I retired, I returned to my boyhood avocation, systematically exploring many of North Americas impact craters from the air and on foot: the Barringer Crater in Arizona, Pilot Lake Crater in the Northwest Territories, Mistastin Crater in Labrador. The walk from the base camp adjacent Lac Laflamme to the north rim of the crater is about a 45 minute walk through a wide expanse of boulders, potholes and streams. The clarity of the water in the Pingualuit Crater was tested with a Secchi disc and has been documented to have a visibility of over 30 metres! (Only chartered aircraft may land on the airports small strip.) The 40Ar-39Ar dating method of the impact melt rocks determined the age of the impact to be 1.4 million years. Click on thumbnails below for full resolution images. My dream to visit this crater finally came true with first a trip in my airplane, GOZooM, over the crater followed by a ground expedition a few years later. It is assumed that the rims of the lake were higher before the ice ages, which carried away any sediments of the meteorite. Recognizing Pingualuit Craters unique characteristics, an international research team collected samples of the lakes sediments, paying special attention to diatoms. The Pingualuit Crater, located in the Ungava Peninsula (Nunavik, Canada; Fig. There were three or four pickups, used to carry supplies between the village and the airport. Like us on Facebook to get the latest on the world's hidden wonders. Flying by my instruments only, I slowly descended to warmer air so I could clear my fogged-in windows. Visitors are amazed by the meteor crater here, which measures 3.4km in diameter. The site might have been considered sacred by its Late Bronze Age inhabitants. It rained most of the time but not enough to get rid of the snow patches nearby. It fascinated me how this feature stood out on that map. These rock fragments cover the ground completely for a distance of nearly 5 km beyond the rim. We picked Salluit to land, refuel and to spend the night because it was safely in range of our remaining fuel. Due to its unique morphometry (depth and shape), the lake bottom may have. Privacy Statement When it's not frozen, which is most of the year, it is filled with icy water. Innes, M. J. S., Recent advances in meteorite crater research at the Dominion Observatory, Ottawa, Canada. The image was acquired October 1, 2021, covers an area of 14.9 by 15.2 km, and is located at 61.3 degrees . On the aerial trip over the Pingualuit Crater, I was accompanied by Mr. Terry Peters, a personal friend and flying instructor. Only by carrying extra fuel on board would I be able to buy myself a luxurious window of observation time over the craterat most 20 minutesbefore I would have to fly to Salluit Airport on the northern tip of Quebec to refuel. Flying a small airplane in the remote north of Canada requires substantial planning to ensure survival in the event of an emergency. While flying north I buzzed an abandoned scientific station, noticing the wind damage to the facility. Now, you can explore these incredible. On the other two days I explored outside the rim documenting the effects of the impact on the local geology. The almost perfectly circular lake of the Ungava Peninsula of Quebec, Canada was formed by a meteorite plummeting from space and impacting the earth almost 1.4 million years ago. Cookie Policy They contained mineral and lithic clasts, some of which showed diagnostic shock-produced Planar Deformation Features in quartz. Morgan Freeman would be terrified. Aerial photographs of Chubb Crater, a striking 3.4 km-wide circular basin in the far north of Quebec, led the Ontario prospector Fred W. Chubb to think it might be an extinct volcano, and possibly the site of a diamond-bearing diatreme. 26, March 1991, p. 31-39. Beneath a 1,500-foot cloud layer, I caught my first sight of the Pingualuit Crater. We did this on the ground using Erics canoe and, from the air using my airplane. It is the ultimate eco-tourism destination. The U.S. science team is located at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. It only came into view when I crossed the rim. This closed system has developed its own local ecosystem, including fish with very large heads, which have adapted to minimal food sources. This remote Moravian mission brought Christianityas well as devastationto the Inuit people. When the ice sheet receded after the most recent ice age, the crater filled with watercreating an astonishingly clear, 267-metre deep lake in Nunavik . Pingualuit Crater. So while sediment deposits in other water bodies in the area do not extend farther back in time than the last ice age, deep sediments in Pingualuit Crater preserve a longer record. Also, it is one of the most northern villages in Quebec and we wanted to claim that we had actually landed there. From my camp site the rim of the crater was visible as a small hill in the distance, illustrated in the image. As I sat on the rim looking out, I thought of Fred Chubb, the prospector who thought Pingualuit might be a volcano crater. During that return trip he discovered a magnetic anomaly on the crater rim that he thought was due to the signature of the meteorite. After my short allotted time over the crater I proceeded further north to Salluit Airport on the Hudson Strait coast, where I refueled from the containers Id carried. This made it a challenge to safely climb up the 100m, 10 slope. Pingualuit impactite contains enrichments in Ir, Ni, Co and Cr suggesting that the impacting body was chondritic in composition with siderophile element enrichment (Grieve 1991). Grieve, R. A. F., Robertson, P., Bouchard, M., Orth, C., Attrep, M. and Bottomley,R., Impact melt rocks from New Quebec crater. Consider supporting our work by becoming a member for as little as $5 a month. It would have been nice to have landed and visited it on foot but this was a pretty unfriendly and desolate place. Caption by Michon Scott. Impact melt is a good indicator of an impact site. Stepwise 40Ar-39Ar dating using a laser on three chips from three samples give integrated ages of 0.62.5 Ma. A Crater of Cosmic Proportions - Smithsonian Magazine The temperature is very mild, although it can become negative. In 1948, the Royal Canadian Air Force covered the same remote area as part of its program of photomapping Canada, though these photographs were not made publicly available until 1950. 289 pp. They also contain enrichments in Ir, Ni, Co and Cr suggesting that the impacting body was chondritic in composition with siderophile element enrichment (Grieve 1991). Even from 1,000 feet the clarity of the water was impressive. 585-595. I tried to imagine the craters creation: A giant rock entering Earths atmosphere at 27,000 mph, causing a blinding flash of light. NASA's Landsat 7 satellite captured this image of Pingualuit Crater on August 17, 2002. Astrogeologic Studies Semiannual Progress Report, Feb.-Aug., 1961, pp. However, Meen's knowledge of Canadian geology tentatively ruled out a volcanic origin. Leading off his article about 4 Geological Wonders of Canada is the mind-blowing site known as Pingualuit Crater Lake. 1962, Shoemaker, E.M. 1962, Astrogeologic Studies Semiannual Progress Report, Feb. to Aug., 1961, 74-78. They travelled to the site in a PBY Catalina flying boat in July 1951, landing on nearby Museum Lake. In this article I mentioned the village of Salluit, about 200 km north of Lac Couture, where we refueled and spent a cold August night. Accommodation in these isolated communities is scarce and very expensive, so we had decided earlier that we would tent. Baldwin had statisticallydeveloped two equations giving relationships for the rim diameter, rim height, and total depth ofmeteorite craters on the Earth and craters on the Moon. Pingualuit National Park - Wikipedia The Pingualuit Crater, formerly called Chubb Crater and later New Quebec Crater (cratre du Nouveau-Qubec), is a young impact crater, by geological standards, located on the Ungava Peninsula, in the administrative region of Nord-du-Qubec, in Quebec, in Canada.It is 3.44 km (2.14 mi) in diameter, and is estimated to be 1.4 0.1 million years old (Pleistocene). The distance to the crater from Kuujjuaq (formerly Fort Chimo), our only reliable source of fuel in that area, demanded that I make exact calculations of fuel burn, fuel load and payload to ensure a safe flight between available airports. This may be best viewed at low sun angles. The smallest observable crater one can see on the Moon with the naked eye is larger than Pingualuit. In Nunavik Province, far northern Canada, the Pingualuit Crater is known as the "Crystal Eye" to the Inuit. Its rocky walls imprison the exceptionally clear blue water of a circular lake. E = 0.097D2 + 1.542D 1.841 In contrast, striations on shatter cone surfaces are distinctly rounded (Nicolaysen and Reimold, 1999). The crater is very fragile. What a view! The lake is made unique by its lack of inlets oroutlets. I reflected on the expeditions which had come here before including Dr. Meens. Once thought to be a possible diamond-bearing kimberlite pipe, the 3.5 km diameter circular structure is now known to be a meteor crater, formed about 1.4 million years ago. Caribou tracks were visible all over the place, but not a caribou to be seen. Your Privacy Rights Marvin, U. (PDF) Deglacial and postglacial evolution of the Pingualuit Crater Lake Offer subject to change without notice. I dont know if the shape of the crater has this acoustic property but it is one of the quietest places outdoors I have ever experienced. with us in 5 gal. The scientific highlight of the exploration for me was the discovery of impact melt. From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, https://simple.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pingualuit_crater&oldid=8400481, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. An interpretation centre is located in the community of Kangiqsujuaq, relating customary stories and legends. The Pingualuit Crater, previously known as Chubb Crater (1950-1968) and New Quebec Crater (1968-1999) is a meteorite crater, located in the Ungava Peninsula of Quebec, Canada. From a distance it looked like a small hill slowly coming into focus on the horizon. Sign up for our newsletter and enter to win the second edition of our book. There were frequent gullies that we had to traverse along the lip of the rim. I heard that more recently a Beaver floatplane had landed on it as well. where D is the logarithm of the diameter of the crater measured in feet, and d is the logarithm ofthe depth, also measured in feet. 1 ), close to the area where the LIS reached its maximum thickness during the Wisconsinan glaciation ( Bouchard and Marcotte, 1986 , Marshall et al., 2000 . The community of Kangiqsujuaq also organizes tours of the permanent exhibition. The next day was to be my hop to the crater. We were finally looking at the lake and were surrounded by the crater walls. Between 1950 and 1968, this Pingualuit crater was known under the name Chubb Crater. Chubb hoped that the crater was that of an extinct volcano, in which case the area might contain diamond deposits similar to those of South Africa. A lake formed in the basin of a massive impact crater takes the shape of an unbroken ring when viewed from above. In it, water appears blue, and land appears in varying shades of beige. The lake also holds some of the purest fresh water in the world, with a salinity level of less than 3 ppm (by comparison, the salinity level of the Great Lakes is 500 ppm). The lake is a young impact crater dating back a mere 1.4 million years and is one of the deepest bodies of water in North America. 1957. Photo credit: NASA. Arctic Impact Crater Lake Reveals Interglacial Cycles in Sediments. The distinctive term of Pingualuit Crater Lake serves as the name of an astonishingly pristine lake. It is on the Ungava Peninsula in the region of Nord-du-Qubec, in Quebec, Canada. METEORITICS, v. 2, pp. I imagined the Canso aircraft that once landed on Pingualuk Lake. Classic example of a simple crater. The crater rim is over 100 metres above the surface of the enclosed lake with a pitch of 40 to 45 degrees down to the water. Following his return, Meen organized a proper expedition with the cooperation of the National Geographic Society and the Royal Ontario Museum. Several small boats with outboard engines were pulled up on the shore. The months of July and August as well as the beginning of September are the best times to go on an expedition in the park. During the times of glacial melt, the water level in the crater was higher than it is today and drained through this gully. The park protects the Pingualuit crater, a young meteorite crater . Pingualuit Crater, Nunavik Province, Canada - NASA Jet Propulsion Monday morning August 25, 2008, we set out for our first exploration of Pingualuit crater. Lowering their equipment through the ice, scientists reached into the extreme depths of the lake bottom to extract a nine-metre sediment core. [10] In 1992, Marvin and Kring documented the petrographic analysis of two impact melt samples collected within the crater rim. The instrument was built by Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. I am thankful to have visited those sites before Pingualuit because I gained much knowledge and perspective on meteor impacts that were helpful in appreciating its unique nature. PINGUALUIT IMPACT CRATER - Crater Explorer It is estimated that the original ground plane was as much as 15 meters above the present level. Please search for specific craters. Meen subsequently made a brief trip by air to the crater with Chubb in 1950; it was on this trip that Meen proposed the name "Chubb Crater" for the circular feature and "Museum Lake" for the irregular body of water about 2mi (3.2km) north of the crater (now known as Laflamme Lake). In the summer of 2008, I stood on that craters rim, gazing down into the crystal-clear lake inside and reflecting on the good fortune that had allowed me to fulfill this lifelong dream. A detailed study of the petrography of the impact melt samples I-86 and II-88 from the Pingualuit Meteorite Crater illustrated the degrees of shock metamorphism affecting the accessory minerals: apatite, sphene, magnetitie and zircon (Marvin 1992). We must have spent nearly 45 minutes circling it to take photos and video before leaving for Salluit, about 40 min. The crater is 3.44 km in diameter with a depth of 400 metres. The economy is based on seal, beluga whale and walrus hunting. The first expedition to the crater was initiated by a prospector, Frederick W. Chubb, who thought the circular structure was a kimberlite tube and thus a source of diamonds. Originating at Rockcliffe Airport in Ottawa, Ontario, my flight plan included long hops over the Canadian Shielda large region of exposed Precambrian rock that encircles the Hudson Baywith refueling stops at remote airports throughout Quebec. The visibility was unlimited, except that there was an overcast at around 3000 feet, with only occasional breaks for sunshine to show through. PDF Exploring the Pingualuit Impact Crater A little more than a million years ago, a space rock wider than a football field struck northern Quebec, blasting a hole 2.14 miles wide into Earths crust. The Impact Crater in Canada; Pingualuit Crater - YouTube On the rim it was perfectly silent, we could hear the waves breaking on the inner rim 150 m below us. Meen, V. Ben. There are also Canada geese, snow geese, wolves, foxes, snowy owls, and Arctic hares that are present in the park. Mineral clasts of quartz and feldspar occur and, in some cases, show shock metamorphic features. The 267m-deep (876ft) Pingualuk Lake fills the hollow, and is one of the deepest lakes in North America. In 1943, the crew of a United States Army Air Force plane noticed a crater in northern Quebec, Canada. Chubb Crater is of historical importance because it was the first meteorite crater to be recognized in Canada, and the first anywhere to be authenticated in the absence of associated meteorites.