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OrbitStudio / Vesta landmarks / Marcia Crater

Marcia Crater

The largest of the three Snowman craters, 68 kilometers across, and one of the youngest large craters on Vesta. Its floor is covered in pits, and at true scale it prints as a deep, crisp bowl.

Size68 km across
Coordinates8.98° N, 20.45° W
TypeImpact crater
AgeAbout 120 to 390 million years, by crater counts on its ejecta
Named afterMarcia, a Vestal Virgin of ancient Rome who died in 113 BC; adopted by the IAU in 2011
Elevation sourceDawn shape model (JPL), 50 m grid

Size, coordinates and name from the IAU Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature; the pits from NASA's Dawn image release; the age from Williams et al. 2014. Coordinates are the center point OrbitStudio uses for this destination.

Where is Marcia on Vesta?

Marcia is centered at 8.98° north, 20.45° west, just north of the equator; the gazetteer gives its longitude as 339.55° east. It is the largest and the southernmost of the three Snowman craters. The International Astronomical Union named it in 2011 after Marcia, a Vestal Virgin of ancient Rome.

Why is Marcia's floor full of pits?

Because water escaped through it. NASA calls Marcia's floor the most spectacularly preserved example of pitted terrain on Vesta: slow impacts of carbon-rich meteorites left water-bearing minerals in the ground, and the heat of later, faster impacts released that water, which escaped into space and left pothole-like pits behind. Marcia is one of the youngest craters on Vesta, the most recent large impact there by the Dawn team's geologic mapping, which counts the craters on its ejecta at 120 to 390 million years, depending on the method.

What does Marcia look like as a 3D print?

A deep, crisp bowl. Its entry frames about 100 kilometers, so the crater fills most of the view, and on a model 200 millimeters across the relief in that view comes out at about 26 millimeters at true scale. The pits on its floor are small, near the limit of a print; the rim, the walls and the slumps on the floor print clearly.

Print Marcia in OrbitStudio Watch how it works · 1:12

What is OrbitStudio?

OrbitStudio turns real elevation data into 3D-printable models. You pick a region of Vesta on a globe or a flat map, choose a jigsaw puzzle or a solid ornament, and get ready-to-print files with terrain and borders already separated and colored. No CAD, no mesh repair. The heights come from the shape model NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory made from Dawn's images, on a 50-meter grid.

Trying it is free and needs no account: pick a region, generate it and turn it around in 3D. Downloading the model — STL files and pre-colored 3MF files for Bambu Studio or OrcaSlicer — takes a Plus or Merchant plan, or one credit from a pass. The generator covers the Moon, Mars, Mercury, Venus, Ceres, Pluto and Charon too.

Other landmarks

The Snowman Rheasilvia Divalia Fossae All Vesta landmarks

The night sky, too

OrbitStudio Sky, the night-sky tool, turns the sky over any place, on any date from 1900 to 2100, into a 3D-printable star map. Its STL is free.