Altimetry Profile of an Unnamed Simple Crater

Today's image features a small, simple impact crater on Mercury's northern plains. The superimposed track is a set of altimetry measurements by the Mercury Laser Altimeter (MLA) that resolves the bowl-shaped morphology characteristic of simple craters. This morphology is evident in the topographic profile on the right of this image that displays how the crater's depth changes from point A to point B.

Instrument: Mercury Laser Altimeter (MLA)
MLA Track: MLASCIRDRAPLFN1112211457
Crater's Center Latitude: 78.1°
Crater's Center Longitude: 327.5° E
Scale: The crater has a diameter of 4.53 km (2.81 miles)

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

Laxness Crater's Topographical Profile

Today's image features Laxness, a crater on Mercury's northern plains named for Halldör Laxness, a twentieth-century Icelandic writer. The overlain MLA track bisecting Laxness reveals the crater's topography, which is difficult to resolve in images because of the crater's persistently shadowed interior. On the right of the image is a cross-section of Laxness showing how the crater's depth changes from point A to point B. The MLA data show that Laxness is a complex crater with a central peak (light blue). While the crater's central peak is not obvious in the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS), it is clearly distinguishable to MLA.

Instrument: Mercury Laser Altimeter (MLA)
MLA Track: MLASCIRDRAPLFN1202071801
Crater's Center Latitude: 83.3°
Crater's Center Longitude: 310.0° E
Scale: The crater has a diameter of 25.9 km (16.1 miles)

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

Double Impact Crater and Digital Elevation Model

The unnamed crater featured in this image might look like a ringed basin at high sun angles, but as can be clearly seen from the inset perspective view, in which the height is exaggerated 5 times, the central portion is a second crater that impacted the middle of the older crater. Such perspective views make use of a digital elevation model (DEM), which can be constructed either by accumulating topographic profiles from the MLA instrument or from measurements of shadows in images (or "photoclinometry"). In this case, the basemap is draped over the Gaskell DEM, which is constructed using photoclinometry. You can make your own perspective views of Mercury's surface using the QuickMap tool.

This image was acquired as part of MDIS's high-resolution stereo imaging campaign. Images from the stereo imaging campaign are used in combination with the surface morphology base map or the albedo base map to create high-resolution stereo views of Mercury's surface, with an average resolution of 200 meters/pixel. Viewing the surface under the same Sun illumination conditions but from two or more viewing angles enables information about the small-scale topography of Mercury's surface to be obtained.

Date acquired: January 14, 2012
Image Mission Elapsed Time (MET): 234999326
Image ID: 1263152
Instrument: Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) of the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS)
Center Latitude: -42.23°
Center Longitude: 40.26° E
Resolution: 188 meters/pixel
Scale: The unnamed crater is ~83 km (52 mi.) across
Incidence Angle: 70.8°
Emission Angle: 22.9°
Phase Angle: 76.1°

Photo 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

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

One Solar Day at Mercury's South Pole

This movie shows 89 WAC images of Mercury's south polar region acquired over one complete Mercury solar day (176 Earth days) in 2011. This dataset enabled the illumination conditions at Mercury's south polar region to be quantified.

Instrument: Wide Angle Camera (WAC) of the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS)
Scale: The large crater near Mercury's south pole, Chao Meng-Fu, has a diameter of 180 km.
Map Information: The movie is shown in polar stereographic projection, extending northward to 73° S, and 0° longitude is at the top.

Video 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

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