Hovnatanian Crater

Today's color image features Hovnatanian crater, named for Armenian painter Hakop Hovnatanian. The crater's elliptical shape and the bright rays' butterfly pattern indicate that a very oblique impact produced Hovnatanian. The brightness of the rays indicate that they are relatively young features on Mercury's surface.

This image was acquired as a targeted high-resolution 11-color image set. Acquiring 11-color targets is a new campaign that began in March 2013 and that utilizes all of the WAC's 11 narrow-band color filters. Because of the large data volume involved, only features of special scientific interest are targeted for imaging in all 11 colors.

Date acquired: May 01, 2013
Image Mission Elapsed Time (MET): 9751363, 9751355, 9751351
Image ID: 3986986, 3986984, 3986983
Instrument: Wide Angle Camera (WAC) of the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS)
WAC filters: 9, 7, 6 (996, 748, 433 nanometers) in red, green, and blue
Center Latitude: -7.39°
Center Longitude: 172.9° E
Resolution: 394 meters/pixel
Scale: Hovnatanian crater is about 34 km (21 miles) long.
Incidence Angle: 15.7°
Emission Angle: 40.0°
Phase Angle: 28.0°

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