This is a meteor crater in Arizona. It's 4,000 feet in diameter and about 600 feet deep inside its rim, which rises nearly 200 feet above the plain. It's about 19 miles west of Winslow, AZ, and of course, it now has a gift shop and space museum on the property.
Discovered in 1891, its age has been estimated at between 5,000 and 50,000 years. Large numbers of nickel–iron fragments from gravel size to 1,400 pounds have been found in a 100-square-mile area. The metal fragments prove the crater was made from a meteor.
On any clear night beyond the bright lights of cities, one can look up and see several meteors per hour in the night sky. As these large bodies of rock burn entering the earth's atmosphere, meteors can be visable for a small fraction of a second up to several seconds.
It is estimated that probably 500 meteorites (meteors in flight) reach the surface of the Earth each year, but less than 10 are recovered. This is because most fall into the ocean, land in remote areas of the Earth, land in places that are not easily accessible, or are just not seen to fall (they fell during the day).
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