Pingualuit National Park - Qubec - provincequebec.com Landsat Image Gallery - Pingualuit Crater, Canada Monday morning August 25, 2008, we set out for our first exploration of Pingualuit crater. Due to its unique morphometry (depth and shape), the lake bottom may have. A flight to that remote area of the Quebec Arctic is not a trivial expedition and Terrys flying expertise was very welcome. I tucked my tent behind a fairly large rock for shelter from the gusting winds (they were steady at 20 knots+). A magnetometer survey did find a magnetic anomaly under the crater's northern rim, however, indicating that a large mass of metal-bearing material was buried below the surface. An account of the discovery and exploration of the two milecrater on the barrens near Hudson Bay. 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. by: Charles O'Dale Type: Simple Age (ma): 1.4 0.1 a - PLEISTOCENE Diameter: 3.44 km Location: Quebec, Canada. The rim is highest and widest at its north east position giving the crater a lopsided cup shape. Besides, general aviation aircraft are not allowed to land in the park. 1950. The Canadian meteor crater. Arctic Char may have swum upstream in the creek through this gully and into the crater from one of the local lakes. It is a unique natural site that I hope visitors in the future will appreciate. E = 0.097D2 + 1.542D 1.841 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. The lake is not connected to the regional drainage system. What a view! We traveled there via a chartered twin otter. When an airport was constructed by Pingualuit Crater and the park was opened to visitors, I had an opportunity to explore the crater on foot. 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 . The area has been glaciated. METEORITICS, vol. Scientists believe the impact forged a crater between 111 and 186 miles (180 and 300 kilometers) wide, but as the crater has endured over 2 billion years of erosion, its exact size is difficult. And all the gravel streets are laid out in neat rows. Flying by my instruments only, I slowly descended to warmer air so I could clear my fogged-in windows. Pingualuit Impact Crater, located in northern Quebec at N 61 16 W 73 40, was the first structure in Canada for which an impact origin was proposed. Charles and I have explored many impact sites before. In 1943, the crew of a United States Army Air Force plane noticed a crater in northern Quebec, Canada. We never did see a caribou herd. Interelement ratios suggest a chondritic impacting body, although they do not define a specific type. I could not use my airplane for the final leg of this trip due to the weight and fuel constraints caused by the extra bulk of our camping gear. Example applications are monitoring glacial advances and retreats; monitoring potentially active volcanoes; identifying crop stress; determining cloud morphology and physical properties; wetlands evaluation; thermal pollution monitoring; coral reef degradation; surface temperature mapping of soils and geology; and measuring surface heat balance. Discovery and scientific study Once largely unknown to the outside world, the lake-filled crater had long been known to local Inuit, who knew it as the "Crystal Eye of Nunavik" for its clear water. This made it a challenge to safely climb up the 100m, 10 slope. These impactites were transported there by glaciation. Perhaps another time on floats or with large tundra tires!! Life. To read the full article, scroll to the bottom of this page for the large image of the article. Clearwater Lakes. Its age is estimated to be 120 thousand years old (this age was attributed after the Laval University expedition, in 2007). The rocky terrain we had to traverse to the crater is very obvious in the picture. [1] The crater and the surrounding area are now part of Pingualuit National Park. The melt rocks have a normative mineralogy corresponding to 70% quartz, orthoclase and albite and are compositionally similar. There were lots of ooohs and aaahhs blurting from the passenger cabin including my own. The physical characteristics of the craters diameter and erosion-reducedrim thus placed it neatly with the other terrestrial meteorite craters on Baldwins curve. We used the time to fold up the tent and refuel. I saw snowgeese and other birds I couldnt identify. I studied the shape of the crater carefully and observed the different textures and colors which were different from what I had seen in photographs. Certainly not a place to be stranded. Diameter 3 km, Rim 160 m above the water surface, Depth 250 m Deglacial and postglacial evolution of the Pingualuit Crater Lake basin,northern Qubec (Canada) . Slickensides are characterized by a diagnostic unidirectional step-like pattern that actually allows investigation of the sense of movement on fractures (Passchier and Trouw 1996). 1951c. Overflight of the Pingualuit Impact Crater in my Cessna C177B C-GOZM (GOZooM) ref Video time: Brent Dalrymple,Radiometric Dating Does Work! Documenting this crater was the main purpose of our trip up to northern Quebec. Morgan Freeman would be terrified. Being an amateur rock hound, I kept searching for any shattercones that would have been created by the impact, unfortunately without success. (Only chartered aircraft may land on the airports small strip.) Parc national des Pingualuit is a marvel of Northern Qubec. Image of the Day Meen led two expeditions to the crater in 1950 and 1951. It is on the Ungava Peninsula in the region of Nord-du-Qubec, in Quebec, Canada. All our planning efforts changed with the November 2007 opening of the Parc National des Pingualuit. The site might have been considered sacred by its Late Bronze Age inhabitants. On the other two days I explored outside the rim documenting the effects of the impact on the local geology. Cookie Settings, The Real History Behind the Archimedes Dial in 'Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny', Why Fireworks Scare Some Dogs but Not Others, See Inside One of Americas Last Pencil Factories, Orca Rams Into Yacht Near Scotland, Suggesting the Behavior May Be Spreading, Why We Set Off Fireworks on the Fourth of July. 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). The rock maybe got a third of the way 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. See. 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). My next comment was LOOK AT THAT BOULDER FIELD. Between 1950 and 1968, this Pingualuit crater was known under the name Chubb Crater. At the 44 minute and 59 second point we headed north-west to the Hudson Strait and the village of Salluit. Professor Reinhard Pienitz of Laval University led a 2007 expedition to the crater which extracted sediment cores from the bottom of the lake, which were filled with fossil pollen, algae, and insect larvae. I have seen volcanos in Costa Rica and the Phillippines. US-German Satellites Show California Water Gains After Record Winter, NASA Researchers Detect Tsunamis by Their Rumble in the Atmosphere, Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar, Two NASA Studies Find Lower Methane Emissions in Los Angeles Region, International Sea Level Satellite Spots Early Signs of El Nio, On the Edge: NASAs Last S-MODE Mission Studies the Oceans Surface. Stepwise 40Ar-39Ar dating using a laser on three chips from three samples give integrated ages of 0.62.5 Ma. and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team. My video and still cameras were constantly active. Three years later Canadian geologist Richard A. F. Grieve listed New Quebec among the 130 known terrestrial impact craters. This is the bedrock which melted and fused with the molecules of the vaporized impactor. Pingualuit Crater, Nunavik Province, Canada - NASA Jet Propulsion About 5 km east of the crater I was fortunate to find a large example of highly shocked and melted impactite (illustrated image below the caribou antler placed on the impactite is for scale). Circumnavigating the crater rim took a full day of walking, with constant maneuvering over large boulders. In addition I experienced a close encounter with a few caribou and found an old Inuit campsite. The samples they found contain the remains of diatoms and other organic material, suggesting that they represent ice-free conditions and possibly interglacial periods. He named it Chubb Crater after the sharp-eyed prospector. Thanks to Charles ODale I was able to see Pingualuit and my dream also came true. V. Ben Meen, the Director of the Royal Ontario Museum of Geology and Mineralogy in Toronto, however, suspected it was an impact crater caused by a meteorite. It is 3.44 kilometres or 2.14 miles in diameter. Baldwin noted that this was higher than the average of 400 feet (122 m)that Meen hadmeasured, but explained that erosion possibly decreased the original rim height, and that hisformula gives slightly higher values for rim heights of craters between 10020,000 feet (306,096 m) in diameter. I will never look at the craters on the Moon the same way again. 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. Dr. Meen estimated that since there were no Inuit legends about the structure, the impact of the meteorite must have occurred at least 3,000 years ago. Pingualuit National Park ( French: Parc national des Pingualuit) is a 1,133.90 km 2 (437.80 sq mi) provincial park located in the Ungava Peninsula 100 km (62 mi) south-west of the Inuit village of Kangiqsujuaq. NASA/METI/AIST/Japan Space Systems, Rock Ptarmigan and Cottontail can be seen at the base of the crater. It looked so close it seemed that you could easily throw a rock into the water from where we stood on the rim. 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. The 267m-deep (876ft) Pingualuk Lake fills the hollow, and is one of the deepest lakes in North America. The economy is based on seal, beluga whale and walrus hunting. Photo credit: NASA. I am not a hiker. There are no trees here. ASTER is one of five Earth-observing instruments launched Dec. 18, 1999, on Terra. The image was acquired October 1, 2021, covers an area of 14.9 by 15.2 km, and is located at 61.3 degrees north, 73.7 degrees west. Early in the morning of the second day we proceeded up to the crater rim. 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 instrument was built by Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. You can barely make out the road we walked down to visit the village later that evening. But the site also boasts an incredible history. The rim however is like a desert because it cannot hold significant amounts of water. The barrenness of the territory was cause for some reflection. It is one of the most transparent lakes in the world, with a Secchi disk visible more than 35m (115ft) deep. 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. This places the impact before the first major northern hemisphere continental glaciation in the middle Pleistocene (Grieve 1991). 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. Slickenside is a smoothly polished surface caused by frictional movement between rocks along the two sides of a fault. Like Atlas Obscura and get our latest and greatest stories in your Facebook feed. The scientific highlight of the exploration for me was the discovery of impact melt. The crater is a ~ 410-m-deep (rim-to-basin) and 3.4-km-wide (rim-to-rim) near circular depression whose rim reaches a maximum elevation of 657 m above sea level (asl . Five billion tons of granite was vaporized in an instant. During the times of glacial melt, the water level in the crater was higher than it is today and drained through this gully. Pingualuit Crater Lake - Rivire-Koksoak, Qubec - Atlas Obscura Natural Wonders: Pingualuit Crater Explorersweb It has also provided useful information about climate changes during the last ice age," writes NASA's Earth Observatory. I tried to imagine the craters creation: A giant rock entering Earths atmosphere at 27,000 mph, causing a blinding flash of light. Lonar Crater sits inside the Deccan Plateaua massive plain of volcanic basalt rock leftover from eruptions some 65 million years ago. I had a very spiritual feeling gazing at this old camp-site trying to picture the family that survived here. The crater itself was a most impressive sight. The walking was extremely difficult with the ground in the area covered in layers with large rock fragments. No purchase necessary. At 1,300 feet deep, Lake Pingualuit is one of the deepest lakes in North America. In the Nunavik region of northern Quebec, not far from Ungava Bay, lies a perfectly round oddity known as the Pingualuit Crater. Not until the late 1980s was it confirmed to be the product of an asteroid strike, when researchers found material that could only have been melted during an explosion caused by the impact of a cosmic rock. 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. We were finally looking at the lake and were surrounded by the crater walls. Shoemaker, E. M., Geological reconnaissance of the New Quebec crater, Canada. An expedition led by James Boulger in 1986 collected a small rock sample[8] from the area surrounding the New Quebec Crater. In Nunavik Province, far northern Canada, the Pingualuit Crater is known as the Crystal Eye to the Inuit. Classic example of a simple crater. . Offer available only in the U.S. (including Puerto Rico). Knowing this, we carried an extra 20 gals. An interpretation centre is located in the community of Kangiqsujuaq, relating customary stories and legends. During that return trip he discovered a magnetic anomaly on the crater rim that he thought was due to the signature of the meteorite. The crateris larger than the smallest crater on the moon that is visible by telescope from earth. 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. The bulge was a result of the explosive impact of the meteorite that had fractured the rocks surrounding the area and increased their volume. 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. A Crater of Cosmic Proportions To appreciate the majesty of Northern Quebec's Pingualuit Crater, you've got to see it from an airplane Charles O'Dale May 2015 Pingualuit crater's circular. The far rim is 3 km in the distance, a challenging hike! 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. Image of the Day Beneath a 1,500-foot cloud layer, I caught my first sight of the Pingualuit Crater. 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. Enrichments of iron, nickel, cobalt, and chromium found in impact melt samples suggest that the meteorite was chondritic in nature. Our planet is pockmarked with the scars of these extraterrestrial visitors. 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. It filled the aircraft window. And we did land with the predicted fuel safety margin. 15 Want to Visit? Communities of these single-celled, silica-shelled algae change in response to environmental changes, including changes in climate. Bouguer Anomaly gravity studies reveal a profile with a well-defined negative anomaly that is symmetrical with the crater. 1957. The lake also is known as the Crystal Eye of Nunavik because of its unusually clear water and the almost perfectly circular shape of its depression. My Cessna could remain airborne for only about six hours at a time, and in this region airports with refueling facilities are far apart. The park territory also hosts Hudson Strait polar bears, which move inland. Although they keep some distance from humans they are easily visible and leave many tracks. 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. Even at our altitude the apparent size of the crater was deceiving. Even from 1,000 feet the clarity of the water was impressive. 10 Earth impact craters you must see - MSN I spent four wonderful days hiking around the crater, burrowing into an Arctic-grade sleeping bag each night. METEORITICS, v. 2, pp. I was thankful the boulders were not wet. Because this lake has no connection to any other water body, inflows from other lakes cannot contaminate Pingualuits sediments. Russias Lake Elgygytgyn rests inside a 3.6-millon-year-old meteorite crater, and preserves the longest continuous climate record in the Arctic. 137-154. An intriguing question is how the fish got into the crater lake. NASAs Landsat 7 satellite captured this image of Pingualuit Crater on August 17, 2002. Parc national des Pingualuit - National Parks - Spaq General Area: North of the tree-line in an area of subdued topography in the Canadian Shield. (1) Organic-rich clayey silts; (2) Angular lithified cm-scale clasts (dropstones . The team drilled a hole through the ice to open a window into natural history. ), the ball would only make it two thirds of the way to the water! The Eaton Canyon, north of Schefferville, is a must for any explorer in that vicinity. Previously called - New Quebec Crater, Ungava Crater & Chubb Crater. (PDF) Pro-and postglacial invertebrate communities of Pingualuit Crater
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