Date acquired: April 10, 2011
Image Mission Elapsed Time (MET): 210938843
Image ID: 114409
Instrument: Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) of the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS)
Center Latitude: 71.02°
Center Longitude: 328.5° E
Resolution: 18 meters/pixel
Scale: The image is approximately 18 km across
Incidence Angle: 71.0°
Emission Angle: 3.9°
Phase Angle: 74.9°
Of Interest: The mounds in this image are the
central peak of an unnamed crater approximately 47 km in diameter, imaged at such high resolution (18 meters/pixel) that only the crater's interior can be seen. Central peaks are of great interest because they expose material that originally resided at depth in the target material.
This image was acquired as a high-resolution targeted observation. Targeted observations are images of a small area on Mercury's surface at resolutions much higher than the 250-meter/pixel (820 feet/pixel) morphology base map or the 1-kilometer/pixel (0.6 miles/pixel) color base map. It is not possible to cover all of Mercury's surface at this high resolution during MESSENGER's one-year mission, but several areas of high scientific interest are generally imaged in this mode each week.
The MESSENGER spacecraft is the first ever to orbit the planet Mercury, and the spacecraft's
seven scientific instruments and radio science investigation are unraveling the history and evolution of the Solar System's innermost planet. Visit the
Why Mercury? section of this website to learn more about the key science questions that the MESSENGER mission is addressing. During the one-year primary mission, MDIS is scheduled to acquire more than 75,000 images in support of MESSENGER's science goals.
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.