Orbital Mosaic of Mercury's North Pole

Last weekend, MESSENGER team members participated in The Challenge of Discovery Educator Workshop. Held simultaneously at four locations across the United States, participants learned about MESSENGER's recent evidence for water ice near Mercury's poles. The view shown above is a mosaic of Mercury's north polar region, created from thousands of MDIS images obtained over MESSENGER's >2 years of orbital operations. It was part of an activity at the weekend's workshop, where different datasets from Mercury's north polar region were explored. View this workshop website to see and download other views of Mercury's north polar region.

Instrument: Wide Angle Camera (WAC) of the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS)
Center Latitude: 90° N
Map Projection: Polar stereographic projection, extending southward to 65° N, with 0° longitude at the bottom
Scale: The diameter of this polar map projection covers 2,130 kilometers (1320 miles)

Map credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington