Mercury

The view shown here is similar to an earlier one, posted in October 2011, but now the coverage is more complete. The globe on the left was created from the MDIS monochrome surface morphology base map campaign. The globe on the right was produced from the MDIS color base map campaign. Each map is composed of thousands of images, and the color view was created by using 3 of the 8 color filters acquired. (1000, 750, and 430 nm wavelengths are displayed in red, green, and blue, respectively.) On March 8, 2013, these global maps will be publicly released at full resolution by NASA's Planetary Data System.

Instrument: Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS)
Center Latitude: 0°
Center Longitude: 75° E
Scale: Mercury's diameter is 4880 kilometers (3030 miles).
Map Projection: orthographic

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

Sholem Aleichem Crater

Acquiring high-resolution 3-color images of Mercury's surface is a major mapping activity in MESSENGER's extended mission. The 3-color campaign complements the 8-color base map (at an average resolution of 1 km/pixel) acquired during MESSENGER's primary mission by imaging Mercury's surface in a subset of the color filters at the highest resolution possible. The three narrow-band color filters are centered at wavelengths of 430 nm, 750 nm, and 1000 nm, and image resolutions generally range from 100 to 400 meters/pixel in the northern hemisphere.

This image was acquired as part of MDIS's high-resolution 3-color imaging campaign, and shows a portion of the 196-kilometer diameter crater Sholem Aleichem. In this view, bright hollows appear to be associated with dark material, while a deposit on the crater's floor has a brighter orange hue, similar to that in areas associated with explosive volcanism.

Date acquired: April 03, 2012
Image Mission Elapsed Time (MET): 241962499, 241962491, 241962495
Image ID: 1601144, 1601142, 1601143
Instrument: Wide Angle Camera (WAC) of the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS)
WAC filters: 9, 7, 6 (1000, 750, 430 nanometers) in red, green, and blue
Center Latitude: 51.01°
Center Longitude: 266.4° E
Resolution: 148 meters/pixel
Scale: An edge of this image is approximately 135 kilometers (84 miles)
Incidence Angle: 62.0°
Emission Angle: 0.2°
Phase Angle: 62.0°

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