As MESSENGER approached Mercury on January 14, 2008, the spacecraft's
Narrow-Angle Camera on the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS) instrument
captured this view of the planet's rugged, cratered landscape illuminated
obliquely by the Sun. The large, shadow-filled, double ringed crater to
the upper right was glimpsed by Mariner 10 more than three decades ago and
named Vivaldi, after the Italian composer. Its outer ring has a diameter
of about 200 kilometers (about 125 miles). MESSENGER's modern camera has
revealed detail that was not well seen by Mariner 10, including the broad
ancient depression overlapped by the lower-left part of the Vivaldi
crater. The MESSENGER science team is in the process of evaluating later
images snapped from even closer range showing features on the side of
Mercury never seen by Mariner 10. It is already clear
that MESSENGER's superior camera will tell us much that could not be
resolved even on the side of Mercury viewed by Mariner's vidicon camera in
the mid-1970s.
This MESSENGER image was taken from a distance of about18,000 kilometers
(11,000 miles), about 56 minutes before the spacecraft's closest encounter
with Mercury. It shows a region roughly 500 kilometers (300 miles) across,
and craters as small as 1 kilometer (0.6 mile) can be seen in this image.
Mission Elapsed Time (MET) of image: 108821483
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.
