NASA’s MESSENGER mission to Mercury continues its exploration of the planet by photographing its surface, including this picture taken close to the Rustaveli crater area. The largest crater here is about 1.5 miles across while the smaller ones range down to 20 or 30 meters. The white streak in the largest crater, visible against the darkenss of the crater’s abyss, is a cosmic ray hitting the Narrow Angle Camera’s CCD sensor.
While many of Earth were gazing up on October 8, 2014 to catch the total lunar eclipse, NASA’s Messenger space probe was also watching. It used the on-board narrow angle camera – from its far away station, in orbit of the planet Mercury to capture the eclipse. The picture of the left shows the normal view of the Earth and Moon from Mercury (two very bright points in space about 107 million kilometers away). During the lunar eclipse, the Moon disappears from view on Mercury as it makes its passage through the Earth’s shadow (as seen on the right).
The wide angle camera on MESSENGER spacecraft’s Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS) took this snapshot of an area on Mercury located north of Rachmaninoff. It captured a possible volcanic vent (near the far left of the picture) and craters to the right of the volcanic vent. These type of vents on are indicative of explosive volcanism that was prevalent in Mercury’s past.
The Raditladi basin on Mercury is believed to be a relatively young formation, showing very few impact craters. The crater has a diameter of 257.7 km (160.1 miles). This eleven colour view of Raditladi was taken by the MESSENGER spacecraft using its Wide Angle Camera (WAC) and more clearly shows the depressions (also called hollows) within the basin, shown by the areas in white.
The polar region of the planet Mercury is home to the Egonu crater, named after the late Nigerian artist, Uzo Egonu. This image was acquired as a high-resolution targeted observation by NASA’s Messenger spacecraft, using its Narrow Angle Camera (NAC). Messenger (Mercury Surface, Space, Environment, Geochemistry and Ranging) is a collaboration between NASA, Johns Hopkins University and the Carnegie Institute for Science to do an orbital study of the planet in our solar system which is closest to the Sun.
