Blog Archives
Mercury’s Cratered Crescent (in Color!)
A view of Mercury from MESSENGER’s October 2008 flyby (NASA / JHUAPL / Gordan Ugarkovic)
Every now and then a new gem of a color-composite appears in the Flickr photostream of Gordan Ugarkovic, and this one is the latest to materialize.
This is a view of Mercury as seen by NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft during a flyby in October 2008. The image is a composite of twenty separate frames acquired with MESSENGER’s narrow-angle camera from distances ranging from 18,900 to 17,700 kilometers and colorized with color data from the spacecraft’s wide-angle camera. (North is to the right.)
Click the image for a closer look, and for an even bigger planet-sized version click here. Beautiful!
Hidden Ice Found on Mercury!
MESSENGER image of Mercury
Who says Mercury’s too hot to be really cool? Even three times closer to the Sun than we are, lacking atmosphere and with scorching daytime temperatures of 425 ºC (800 ºF), Mercury still has places more than cold enough to hide ice. This is the most recent announcement from the MESSENGER mission team: (very nearly) confirmed ice on the first rock from the Sun!
Mercury’s Sufferingly Sulf’rous Surface
The rugged terrain surrounding Mercury’s Vivaldi basin may be rich in sulfur
Named for the 17th-century Venetian composer, the southern half of Mercury’s Vivaldi basin is seen in this image acquired on August 26 by NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft. The 213-km (132-mile) -wide crater’s smooth floor is contrasted by the incredibly rugged terrain beyond its outermost ring — a result of the ejected material that was flung out from the impact site and emphasized by the low angle of illumination.
Recent findings from the MESSENGER mission have revealed variations in Mercury’s surface composition due to volcanism that occurred at different times, as well as a surprising concentration of elements rich in magnesium and sulfur — much more, in fact, than any of the other terrestrial planets.
Rhapsody on an Impact Event: Mercury’s Rachmaninoff Crater
The peak-ringed interior of Mercury’s Rachmaninoff crater
Rachmaninoff is a spectacular double-ring basin on Mercury, and this color view is one of the highest resolution color image sets acquired of the basin’s floor. Visible around the edges of the frame is a circle of mountains that make up Rachmaninoff’s peak ring structure. The color of the basin’s floor inside the peak-ring differs from the darker material outside of it, and contains concentric troughs formed by extension (pulling apart) of the surface, likely as the molten surface solidified and cooled in the wake of the initial impact event.
This image was acquired as a high-resolution targeted color observation by MESSENGER on July 31, 2012. See a wider-angle view of the 140-km-wide Rachmaninoff crater here.
Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington
Goodbye, Earth!
If you haven’t seen this before, you’re probably not alone. It’s a video made from a series of several hundred images acquired by NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft as it swung past Earth, departing forever on its journey to Mercury on August 2, 2005 — just a day shy of one year after its launch. Many blogs that are around today didn’t exist then (including Lights in the Dark!) and so there’s probably lots of people who haven’t had a chance to watch this.
I suggest you check it out. It’s very cool.
MESSENGER Gets It “Donne”
Donne crater on Mercury
Named after the 17th-century English metaphysical poet, Mercury’s Donne crater was captured in this image by NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft. The 53-mile (83-km) -wide crater features a large, rounded central peak and numerous lobate scarps lining its floor.
What are lobate scarps? Find out more here.
A Blue Monday on Mercury
MESSENGER wide-angle camera image of Mercury's surface acquired July 5, 2011.
This latest image from NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft, now in its extended mission around Mercury, shows a color view of a section of the first planet’s rugged and sun-blasted surface.
