Ray craters on Ganymede: Implications for cratering apex-antapex asymmetry and surface modification processes

Abstract

As the youngest features on Ganymede, ray craters are useful in revealing the sources of recent impactors and surface modification processes on the satellite. We examine craters with D> 10km on Ganymede from images obtained by the Voyager and Galileo spacecraft to identify ray craters and study their spatial distributions. Furthermore, we carefully select images of appropriate solar and emission angles to obtain unbiased ray crater densities. As a result, we find that the density of large ray craters (D> 25km) on the bright terrain exhibits an apex-antapex asymmetry, and its degree of asymmetry is much lower than the theoretical estimation for ecliptic comets. For large craters (D> 25km), ecliptic comets ought to be less important than previously assumed, and a possible explanation is that nearly isotropic comets may play a more important role on Ganymede than previously thought. We also find that small ray craters (10km<D < 25km) on the bright terrain and ray craters (D> 10km) on the dark terrain show no apex-antapex asymmetry. We interpret that the distribution difference between the terrain types comes from preferential thermal sublimation on the dark terrain, while the distribution difference between large and small ray craters suggests that rays of small craters are more readily erased by some surface modification processes, such as micrometeorite gardening.