Click on the image for the movie

As MESSENGER completed its second successful flyby of Mercury, the NAC took images of the planet every 5 minutes as it receded in the distance. In total, 124 images were compiled sequentially to produce this movie. At the start of the movie, MESSENGER was about 93,000 kilometers (about 58,000 miles) from Mercury, and the first image has a field of view of about 2,500 kilometers (about 1,500 miles) in width. At the end of the movie, the MESSENGER spacecraft was about 288,000 kilometers (179,000 miles) from Mercury.

Date Acquired: October 6, 2008
Image Mission Elapsed Time (MET): 131787760 - 131824960
Instrument: Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) of the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS)
Spacecraft Altitude: 93,000 kilometers (58,000 miles) to 288,000 kilometers (179,000 miles)

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.