Geological Structure Map of Mercury

Scientists have known since Mariner 10 that Mercury has contracted. This contraction is a result of the cooling of Mercury's interior, and is the process responsible for the formation of the planet's wrinkle ridges and lobate scarps. For almost four decades, however, the amount of global contraction measured from spacecraft data has been substantially less than that predicted by models of the thermal evolution of Mercury.

Now, using global photogeological and topographic MESSENGER data of Mercury, members of the MESSENGER team have mapped almost 6,000 ridges and scarps across the planet. Today's image shows the result of this mapping work, with structures color-coded according to one of four classes. (The global photogeological and topographic data used in this study are shown in the bottom left and right, respectively, of the image.) With these results, the MESSENGER team has calculated that Mercury contracted to a much greater extent than had been determined previously from mapping -- by up to seven times more, in fact.

This study was published online in the journal Nature Geoscience on Sunday, March 16, 2014, and is being presented today in the "Mercury" session at the 45th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, which is being held this week in The Woodlands, Texas. In total, MESSENGER team members are presenting 25 papers at this conference.

Date published online: March 16, 2014
Center Latitude: 0°
Center Longitude: 0°E
Projection: Molleweide
Reference: Byrne et al. (2014) Mercury's global contraction much greater than earlier estimates, Nature Geoscience, doi:10.1038/NGEO2097

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

New Quadrangle Maps of Mercury

A new set of Mercury maps are available on the USGS website. These maps utilize the current best MESSENGER mosaic of Mercury, which covers 100% of the surface. Mercury's surface is divided into 15 different quadrangles. The H-10 quadrangle, which is named for the crater Derain, is shown here at half the available resolution. For the full resolution map of this region, and all of Mercury's surface, visit the USGS website.

Map Quadrangles: H-10 Derain
Center Latitude: 0°
Center Longitude: 36° E (324° W)
Scale: Derain has a diameter of 167 km (104 miles)
USGS Maps of Mercury website: http://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov/Page/mercuryQuadMap

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

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

Digital Elevation Model of Mercury's Northern Hemisphere

The above image is from a digital elevation model (DEM) created by using orbital MLA data. The colors illustrate Mercury's topography, which spans roughly from -5 km (deep blue) to 5 km (red). The specific color bar is given on the ACT-REACT QuickMap description of this DEM layer. Also in QuickMap, this DEM can be used to generate 3D views of the surface.

The DEM can be downloaded on MESSENGER's Global Mosaics of Mercury webpage in a variety of formats and resolutions. The DEM was created by using MLA orbital data through that released by the PDS on March 8, 2013. Due to MESSENGER's highly elliptical orbit, MLA can only range to the surface in the northern hemisphere. Consequently, the DEM products derived from MLA data only cover the northern hemisphere of Mercury. Additionally, the accuracy of each DEM product is higher closer to the north pole, and near the equator, the data are highly interpolated.

Instrument: Mercury Laser Altimeter (MLA)
Center Latitude: 90° N
Map Projection: Polar stereographic projection, extending southward to 55° N, with 0° longitude at the bottom
Resolution: 2 km/pixel
Scale: The distance across the center of this polar map projection is approximately 2,980 kilometers (1850 miles)
Download: Global Mosaics of Mercury Webpage

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

Topographical Map of Mercury's Northern Polar Region

This view of the topography of Mercury's north polar region complements yesterday's image of the day (PIA16950). Both were used during The Challenge of Discovery Educator Workshop, which was held last weekend. Workshop participants learned about MESSENGER's recent evidence for water ice near Mercury's poles through an activity that explored different datasets of Mercury's north polar region. Those activity materials can be viewed and download from this workshop website. In this view, MLA tracks across the surface are colored by the height of the surface relative to a reference sphere with a radius of 2440 kilometers.

Instrument: Mercury Laser Altimeter (MLA)
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

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

Mercury Global Map

A global color map of Mercury's surface has been created by mosaicking thousands of sets of images obtained by the MESSENGER Wide Angle Camera (WAC). The colors shown here are related to variations in the spectral reflectance across the planet. This view captures both compositional differences and differences in how long materials have been exposed at Mercury's surface. Young crater rays, arrayed radially around fresh impact craters, appear light blue or white. Medium- and dark-blue areas are a geologic unit of Mercury's crust known as the "low-reflectance material," thought to be rich in a dark, opaque mineral. Tan areas are plains formed by eruption of highly fluid lavas. The large circular area near the top center is the Caloris impact basin, whose interior is filled with smooth, somewhat younger volcanic plains. Small orangish spots are materials deposited by explosive volcanic eruptions.

The color base map shown here consists of MDIS images taken through eight different color filters. It is part of a global color map that covers more than 99% of Mercury's surface with an average resolution of about 1 kilometer per pixel.

Instrument: Wide Angle Camera (WAC) of the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS). This is an enhanced-color presentation created from a statistical combination of images taken through eight of the WAC filters.

Video credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington; text credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington

Note: Available on the original NASA webpage are two different size maps available for download: a smaller 6.5 MB video and a larger 23 MB video.

Mercury South Polar Illumination Map

Shown here is an illumination map of Mercury's south polar region. The map is colored on the basis of the percentage of time that a given area is sunlit; areas appearing black in the map are regions of permanent shadow. This map was created by using 89 wide-angle camera (WAC) images of Mercury's south polar region acquired by the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS) over one complete Mercury solar day (176 Earth days) which can be viewed in this movie. Radar-bright deposits, which may be water ice, collocate with regions of permanent shadow.

Scale: The large crater near Mercury's south pole, Chao Meng-Fu, has a diameter of 180 km
Map Information: This illumination map is shown in polar stereographic projection, extending northward to 73° S, and 0° longitude is at the top

Map credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington/Byrne et al.

Map of Northern Shadows

MESSENGER's highly eccentric orbit passes high above Mercury's south pole and low over Mercury's north polar region. Consequently, unlike for the south, a single WAC image cannot view the entire north polar region. However, more than 6,000 WAC images have been acquired of Mercury's north polar region, providing views under different illumination conditions over two Mercury solar days. These images allow areas to be mapped that are in shadow in all MDIS images to date. This mosaic shows a view of Mercury's north polar region assembled from those images, with areas in shadow shown in red. A small fraction of Mercury's surface near the north pole has yet to be imaged and is the focus of a new imaging campaign in MESSENGER's newly inaugurated extended mission. Radar-bright features near Mercury's north pole, that may be water ice, collocate with shadowed areas.

Instrument: Wide Angle Camera (WAC) of the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS)
Scale: On Mercury, 5° of latitude is approximately 213 km
Map Information: Polar stereographic projection with every 5° of latitude and 30° of longitude indicated and with 0° longitude at the bottom

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

Mercury's Topographic Map of the Northern Hemisphere

The Mercury Laser Altimeter (MLA) ranges at a wavelength of 1064 nm at an 8 Hz rate and illuminates Mercury's surface in spots between 15 and 100 m across, depending on the MESSENGER spacecraft's range. The MLA has so far returned 10.7 million precise measurements of the elevation of Mercury's northern hemisphere. Shown here is a polar stereographic projection of the topography of Mercury from the north pole to 5° S. The outlines of selected major impact structures are shown as black circles.

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

Topographic Map of Mercury's Northern Plains

Shown here is a perspective view of the immense volcanic plains that span Mercury's northern latitudes, colorized by the topographic height of the surface. The purple colors are the lowest and white is the highest. The total dynamical range of the height variation measured on Mercury is roughly 10 km, which is a smaller range than is found on either the Moon (20 km) or Mars (30 km).

Map Details: Every 5 degrees in latitude and longitude is marked
Scale: On Mercury, 5 degrees of latitude is approximately 213 kilometers (132 miles)

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

Goethe Impact Basin Topographical Map

Topographic information from the Mercury Laser Altimeter (MLA) is used to colorize a image mosaic of Goethe basin, located in Mercury's northern region. The purple colors are low and white is the highest; the total range of heights shown in this view is about 1 kilometer. Goethe basin is home to a variety of interesting features, including ghost craters with graben, wrinkle ridges that outline the basin, and dark craters that host radar-bright materials.

Scale: The width of this image is about 250 kilometers (150 miles)

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

Caloris Basin Tectonic Map

The large Caloris basin hosts a wide variety of tectonic features, including graben, ridges, and Pantheon Fossae. MESSENGER team members are in the process of mapping the tectonic features within the Caloris basin and deciphering their complicated relationships. The tectonic map shown here was published in the abstracts of the 43rd Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, which is being held this week in The Woodlands, Texas. In total, MESSENGER team members are presenting 57 papers at this conference.

Center Latitude: 31°
Center Longitude: 163° E
Scale: Caloris basin has a diameter of 1,550 kilometers (960 miles)
Reference: From abstract #1722 by Paul K. Byrne and coauthors at the 43rd Lunar and Planetary Science Conference

Map credit: Byrne et al. (2012). A tectonic survey of the Caloris basin, Mercury. 43rd Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, The Woodlands, Texas, abstract #1722.

Beethoven Basin Elevation Map

This elevation map of the Beethoven basin is color-coded to show the height of features on Mercury's surface. Mercury lacks a "sea level," so the zero-point reference elevation is defined to be the mean planetary radius of 2440 km. Blue areas, such as within Bello crater on the floor of Beethoven, have negative elevations. The red and white areas to the southwest are more than 8 km higher than the lowest points in this area.

Center Latitude: -20°
Center Longitude: 236° E
Scale: Beethoven basin is ~650 km (404 miles) in diameter
Image information: A digital terrain model (DTM) derived from Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS) stereo images. The lateral spacing is 330 meters and the map is in stereographic (conformal) projection. The image is taken from abstract number 1913 submitted to the 2012 Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, by Frank Preusker and colleagues.

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

Mapping Beethoven

At top, the white line highlights the region of Mercury's surface visible to the XRS during a solar flare on 16 June 2011. Near the center is the ~650-km-diameter Beethoven impact basin at 21° S, 236° E. This region has a higher Mg/Si ratio than the northern plains and is closer in composition to terrestrial komatiites, low-silica, high-temperature volcanic rocks that formed only very early in Earth's history.

Below, smooth plains within the same area have been mapped. In green are plains of volcanic origin. These plains display flooding and embayment relationships and color contrasts typical of volcanic plains on Mercury. Yellow denotes plains of uncertain origin. Though they may also be volcanic, they lack definitive evidence for a volcanic origin and may have formed as fluidized impact ejecta, possibly from the Beethoven impact basin, or as impact melt. In blue are plains that formed when rock was melted by impacts. Even geologically complex regions, such as the area seen here, are often dominated by volcanic deposits, and their compositions are consistent with a volcanic origin.

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

A Northern Footprint

The X-Ray Spectrometer (XRS) on MESSENGER collects compositional information for relatively large regions on Mercury's surface, and strong signals are only received during times of high solar activity. The blue region outlined in this wide-angle camera image mosaic shows the region visible to the XRS during a solar flare on 16 April 2011. The XRS data indicates that the area is basaltic in composition, the same type of volcanic rock that comprises the lunar maria. This region is part of the vast, high-reflectance northern plains that cover approximately 6% of Mercury's surface. The 1000, 750, and 430 nm bands of the Wide Angle Camera are displayed in red, green, and blue, respectively.

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

Mercury Landscape

When MESSENGER first flew by Mercury on January 14, 2008, MDIS acquired images of a large portion of Mercury's surface that had never previously been seen by spacecraft. This mosaic of NAC images shows some of the geologic features discovered during that first flyby that have been subsequently named: the curving cliff face of Beagle Rupes, the elongated crater Sveinsdottir, and the craters Izquierdo and Kunisada flooded with lava.

This year, the MESSENGER spacecraft is positioned once again to visit the Solar System's innermost planet. However, this time, the spacecraft won't just pass by. On March 18, 2011, a 15-minute maneuver will place MESSENGER in orbit about Mercury, making it the first spacecraft ever to do so. The MESSENGER mission will then begin an extensive year-long science campaign to unravel Mercury's mysteries. 2011 promises to be an exciting year of further discoveries for the MESSENGER mission.

Date Acquired: January 14, 2008
Instrument: Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) of the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS)
Scale: Izquierdo Crater is 170 kilometers (106 miles) in diameter.

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