Clearwater Lakes

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Clearwater Lakes
Clearwater Lakes as seen from a Space Shuttle (North lies roughly to the bottom left)
Location	Quebec
Coordinates	56°08′N 74°18′WCoordinates: 56°08′N 74°18′W
Lake type	impact crater lake
Primary outflows	Clearwater River
Basin countries	Canada
Surface area	1383 km²
Surface elevation	241 m

The Clearwater Lakes (officially known by the French name, Lac à l'Eau Claire ^[1]; the Cree call them Wiyasakami and the Inuit Allait Qasigialingat) are a pair of circular lakes on the Canadian Shield in Quebec, Canada, near Hudson Bay.

The lakes are actually a single body of water with a sprinkling of islands forming a "dotted line" between the eastern and western parts. The name is due to the clear water it holds. There are actually 25 lakes with that name in the province (26 if you count the "Petit lac à l'Eau Claire" —the "Small Clearwater Lake"). These are the largest and northernmost.

[edit] Impact craters

The lakes fill circular depressions that are interpreted as paired impact craters (astroblemes).^[2] The eastern and western craters are 26 km and 36 km in diameter, respectively. Each crater has same age, 290 ± 20 million years (Permian), and it is believed that they formed simultaneously. The impactors may have been gravitationally bound as a binary asteroid. This suggestion was first made by Thomas Wm. Hamilton in a 1978 letter to Sky & Telescope magazine in support the then-controversial theory that asteroids may possess moons.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] References

^ Lac à l'Eau Claire. Commission de Toponymie Québec. Retrieved on 2008-03-10.
^ Robertson, P.B. & Grieve, R.A.F. 1975 Impact structures in Canada: Their recognition and characteristics. Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, v. 69, pp. 1-21.