Talk:Palimpsest (planetary astronomy)

Ghost crater

The term "Ghost crater" redirects here. I think it is sufficiently different in meaning or at least in usage to make the terms distinct, or at least "ghost crater" should be discussed in the article because they are not entirely synonymous. The description of "palimpsest" in the article is accurate for the icy moons in the outer solar system. But the term "ghost crater", with regard to earth's moon which is not icy, is sometimes applied to craters which have not undergone "relaxation" of the surface but have been nearly filled in by mare basalt or by "plains material" which is probably caused by flow of ejecta from giant impacts. There are lunar craters where relaxation of the surface has likely contributed to the current morphology (such as the crater Haldane), so the term "Palimpsest" might be considered a subset of "Ghost craters". Jstuby (talk) 15:46, 15 April 2019 (UTC)

The content we have here and in Ghost craters on Mercury (as well as Haldane (lunar crater)) seems most consistent with treating these as separate, related classes of craters. So, for now I'm redirecting ghost crater to Ghost craters on Mercury#Ghost craters until we have a separate general article on ghost craters. WolfmanSF (talk) 16:19, 15 April 2019 (UTC)

I will take this on as a project over the next few days to create a general article on ghost craters. Ghost craters on Mercury needs a lot of work anyway - lots of misleading and/or redundant stuff in it. Jstuby (talk) 00:52, 23 December 2020 (UTC)