Date Acquired: October 6, 2008
Image Mission Elapsed Time (MET): 131788060-131840260
Instrument: Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) of the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS)
Scale: Mercury's diameter is 4880 kilometers (3030 miles)
Spacecraft Altitude: 95,000-370,000 kilometers (59,000-230,000 miles)
Of Interest: These images were taken by MESSENGER as the spacecraft departed Mercury after completing its second flyby on October 6, 2008. During this sequence, images were taken every five minutes. A portion of the same sequence, totaling 198 images in all, has also been
made into a movie. MESSENGER will make its third and final flyby of Mercury on September 29, 2009, and will become the first spacecraft ever to orbit Mercury in March 2011.
Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington
For information regarding the use of MESSENGER images, see the image use policy.