#PPOD: What a wintery image: a red and white sphere that, if seen from a distance, resembles a festive decoration. The ‘bauble’ in question is actually the Manicouagan crater in the Canadian province of Quebec. Visible from space, this round structure was formed by a giant asteroid impact some 214 million years ago.
The anular reservoir, with René-Levasseur Island at its centre, is some 700 km north-east of Quebec City.
Sometimes referred to as the ‘eye of Quebec’, it spans 72 km from east to west, while the asteroid that caused the impact is thought to have been 5 km in diameter.
This false-colour image was captured by Copernicus Sentinel-2.
In this image, the white is actually snow. Frozen lake water is shown in blue. The area’s thick vegetation, shown in red, includes boreal forest and tundra.
Credit: Modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2022), processed by ESA
SETI Institute