This beautiful image shows a segment of the rim of the crater Degas. If you're a devoted MESSENGER follower, then you've no doubt heard all about the floor of Degas. So, let's look a little farther up, shall we? Just outside the rim, i.e. the top half of this image, the texture of the surface changes dramatically. This is the continuous ejecta blanket. This material completely covers the pre-existing terrain. In many instances, the composition of the ejecta blanket is different from the composition of the crater itself. This is because the material that forms the ejecta blanket is some of the deepest material thrown out during the formation of the crater.
Date acquired: October 01, 2012
Image Mission Elapsed Time (MET): 257621391
Image ID: 2686511
Instrument: Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) of the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS)
Center Latitude: 37.60°
Center Longitude: 232.9° E
Resolution: 26 meters/pixel
Scale: This image is ~28 km ( ~17 mi.) across.
Incidence Angle: 65.2°
Emission Angle: 9.5°
Phase Angle: 74.7°
Photo credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington
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