Enhanced Color Map of Mercury

This colorful view of Mercury is similar to that used to generate this movie [23MB, 6.5MB] of Mercury as a spinning globe, and these two individual views (centered at 140°E and 320°E) of the innermost planet. The enhanced color view is overlaid on the global monochrome base map, which is available for download here.

The enhanced color was produced by using images from the color base map imaging campaign during MESSENGER's primary mission. These colors are not what Mercury would look like to the human eye, but rather the colors enhance the chemical, mineralogical, and physical differences between the rocks that make up Mercury's surface. This specific color combination places the second principal component in the red channel, the first principal component in the green channel, and the ratio of the 430 nm/1000 nm filters in the blue channel.

Instrument: Wide Angle Camera (WAC) of the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS)
Center Latitude: 0°
Center Longitude: 180° E
Map Projection: Simple cylindrical projection
Resolution: 3.74 km/pixel
Scale: Mercury's diameter is 4880 kilometers (3030 miles)

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