Scarlatti is a pit-floored crater on Mercury, which was discovered in 1974 by the ''

Mariner 10 ''Mariner 10'' was an American Robotic spacecraft, robotic space probe launched by NASA on 3 November 1973, to fly by the planets Mercury (planet), Mercury and Venus. It was the first spacecraft to perform flybys of multiple planets. ''Marin ...

'' spacecraft. It has a prominent

peak ring A peak ring crater is a type of complex crater, which is different from a multi-ringed basin or central-peak crater. A central peak is not seen; instead, a roughly circular ring or plateau, possibly discontinuous, surrounds the Impact crater, crat ...

, and it is one of 110 peak ring basins on Mercury.Chapman, C. R., Baker, D. M. H., Barnouin, O. S., Fassett, C. I., Marchie, S., Merline, W. J., Ostrach, L. R., Prockter, L. M., and Strom, R. G., 2018. Impact Cratering of Mercury. In ''Mercury: The View After

MESSENGER Messenger, Messengers, The Messenger or The Messengers may refer to: People * Courier, a person or company that delivers messages, packages, or mail * Messenger (surname) * Bicycle messenger, a bicyclist who transports packages through cities * M ...

'' edited by Sean C. Solomon, Larry R. Nittler, and Brian J. Anderson. Cambridge Planetary Science. Chapter 9. The crater floor is covered by the smooth plains material. The crater displays an arcuate collapse feature (central pit) along the northeastern peak ring. The size of the pit, which was first noticed in ''

'' images obtained in January 2008, is . Such a feature may have resulted from collapse of a

magma chamber A magma chamber is a large pool of liquid rock beneath the surface of the Earth. The molten rock, or magma, in such a chamber is less dense than the surrounding country rock, which produces buoyant forces on the magma that tend to drive it u ...

underlying the central peak ring complex of the crater. The collapse feature is an analog of Earth's volcanic

caldera A caldera ( ) is a large cauldron-like hollow that forms shortly after the emptying of a magma chamber in a volcanic eruption. An eruption that ejects large volumes of magma over a short period of time can cause significant detriment to the str ...

s. Scarlatti is thought to have the same age as the

Caloris basin Caloris Planitia is a plain within a large impact basin on Mercury, informally named Caloris, about in diameter. It is one of the largest impact basins in the Solar System. "Calor" is Latin for "heat" and the basin is so-named because the Su ...

Hollows

A cluster of hollows are present along the southwestern peak ring. Scarlatti crater hollows EN0244488176M EN0244488181M.jpg, The bright patches are some of the hollows Hollows in Scarlatti EN1051805374M.map.jpg, Detail of the hollows at the center of the image to the left.

References

Impact craters on Mercury {{Mercury-planet-stub