Alternative Title: ejecta terrain
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Two types of terrain surround Caloris—the basin rim and the basin ejecta terrains. The rim consists of a ring of irregular mountain blocks approaching 3 km (2 miles) in height, the highest mountains yet seen on Mercury, bounded on the interior by a relatively steep slope, or escarpment. A second, much smaller escarpment ring stands about 100–150 km (60–90 miles) beyond the...
...causing its rim to be elevated above the surrounding terrain. The height of the rim accounts for about 5 percent of the total crater depth. The excavated material outside the crater is called the ejecta blanket. The elevation of the ejecta blanket is highest at the rim and falls off rapidly with distance.
...thousands of square kilometres. The outer rings of the basins are clifflike scarps that face inward. Because of the gradation of smaller examples into ordinary craters and because of the apparent ejecta-blanket patterns of radially striated terrain surrounding them, multiringed basins are believed to be giant impact features. The rings probably were formed as part of the crater-forming...