As the MESSENGER spacecraft approached Mercury on January 14, 2008, the
Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) of the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS)
snapped this image of the crater Matisse. Named for the French artist
Henri Matisse, Matisse crater was imaged during the Mariner 10 mission and
is about 210 kilometers (130 miles) in diameter. Matisse crater is in the
southern hemisphere and can be seen near the terminator of the planet (the
line between the sunlit, day side and the dark, night side) in both the
color (see PIA10189) and single-filter, black-and-white single
(see PIA10179) images released previously that show an overview of the
entire incoming side of Mercury.
On Mercury, craters are named for people, now deceased, who have made
contributions to the humanities, such as artists, musicians, painters,
and authors. The International Astronomical Union (IAU) oversees the
official process of naming new craters and other new features discovered
on bodies throughout the solar system. Scientists studying and mapping
unnamed features can suggest names for consideration by the IAU. The 1213
images taken by MESSENGER during its first flyby encounter with Mercury
cover a large region of Mercury's surface previously unseen by spacecraft,
revealing many new craters and other features that will need to be named.
Mission Elapsed Time (MET) of image: 108821375
These images are from MESSENGER, a NASA Discovery mission to conduct the
first orbital study of the innermost planet, Mercury. For information
regarding the use of images, see the MESSENGER image use policy.
