Last week, the MESSENGER team learned that the impact crater seen in the
middle of this Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) image has been officially named
Eminescu. The crater was named in honor of Mihai Eminescu, an accomplished
and influential poet who is still considered the national poet of Romania.
The MESSENGER team proposed the name to the International Astronomical
Union (IAU), the authority that officially names surface features on
planetary bodies.
Eminescu crater is 125 kilometers (78 miles) in diameter and can be seen
just at the top of the image previously released on January 30 (PIA10384).
The image shown here was acquired by the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS)
on January 14, 2008, and shows a portion of Mercury's surface unseen by
spacecraft prior to MESSENGER's historic flyby. Eminescu is a particularly
interesting crater for several reasons. Eminescu formed more recently than
most of the craters on Mercury, on the grounds that there are very few
later craters superposed on it. Moreover, impressive chains of secondary
craters, formed by material ejected by the impact explosion that formed
the crater, radiate away from Eminescu. The central peaks within the
crater are arranged in a circular pattern; geologists call this a "peak
ring." The bright peaks inside Eminescu exhibit unusual color
characteristics in the 11-color Wide Angle Camera (WAC) images, which the
MESSENGER Science Team is currently studying. They show up with a bluish
tinge in the previously released false-color image of the entire planet
(PIA10398); Eminescu is just north of the equator, near the
day/night "terminator" in that image.
Image Mission Elapsed Time (MET): 108828468
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.
