MESSENGER: MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging

A variety of global mosaics of Mercury's surface are available. As the MESSENGER mission progresses and new images are released to NASA's Planetary Data System (PDS), new mosaics will also be available. When downloading, please keep in mind that the file size for some of the high-resolution mosaics can be quite large. For information regarding the use of MESSENGER mosaics, see the image use policy.

At the very end of 2012, MESSENGER obtained the final image needed to view 100% of Mercury's surface under daylight conditions. The mosaics shown here cover all of Mercury's surface and were produced by using the monochrome mosaic released by NASA's Planetary Data System (PDS) on March 8, 2013, as the base. See the section below for more information about the PDS mosaic product.

To fill the area near the north pole, the PDS product was trimmed northward of 83°N and an average mosaic that extended from 82.5°N to 90°N was used, averaging the 0.5° latitude overlap between the PDS mosaic and the average north polar mosaic. To fill the area near the south pole, the PDS product was trimmed southward of 85.5°S and an average mosaic that extended from 85°S to 90°S was used, again averaging the 0.5° latitude overlap. Any remaining gaps in the global mosaic were filled by using images obtained in support of the high-incidence imaging campaign. The global maps are centered at 0° longitude in simple cylindrical projection. The polar mosaics are in polar stereographic projections that extend to 65° north or south latitude, with 180° longitude at the top of the north polar mosaic and 0° longitude at the top of the south polar mosaic.

These mosaics were created using MESSENGER orbital images and were released by NASA's Planetary Data System (PDS) on March 8, 2013. The images in the mosaics cover the first year of MESSENGER orbital operations and include an 8-color global mosaic and a higher resolution monochrome mosaic.

The color mosaic is comprised of 8 narrow-band color filters of the MDIS Wide Angle Camera (WAC). Placing the 1000-nm, 750-nm, and 430-nm filters in the red, green, and blue channels, respectively, produced the enhanced-color mosaics available below. Full resolution global mosaics of each of the 8 narrow-band color filters as well as mosaics for the emission, incidence, phase, observation ID, and MDR metric are also available individually below. Visit the PDS for access to mosaics and for documentation.

The monochrome mosaic is composed of MDIS Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) images and WAC images acquired in the filter centered at 750 nm.

In both mosaics, images are selected and prioritized with different considerations of resolution, solar incidence angles, and emission angles. The higher priority images end up on the 'top.' Both mosaics can be explored interactively using ACT-REACT QuickMap. The mosaics are available for download below in png or geotiff formats. The geotiff file sizes can be quite large, which should be taken into account when downloading. The polar mosaics are in polar stereographic projections, with 180° longitude, 65° latitude at the top center of the north polar mosaic and 0° longitude, -65° latitude at the top center of the south polar mosaic. The global mosaics that cover the entire planet are in a simple cylindrical projection, centered on 0° latitude and 0° longitude.

Older mosaics that were created previously using MESSENGER orbital images that were released by the PDS are still available at the links below:

This mosaic, released October 28, 2011, covers >99.9% of Mercury's surface. The mosaic is made primarily of MDIS orbital images acquired as part of the surface morphology base map. For additional information about this mosaic, visit this featured image page. This mosaic is available at a resolution of 2.5 km/pixel. Click here to download the png format file (13.5 MB).

Map-A-Planet Mosaic Using Images Acquired Prior to MESSENGER's Orbital Operations

This global mosaic was created in 2009 by using images from MESSENGER's three Mercury flybys and from the Mariner 10 mission in 1974-75. Explore this high-resolution global mosaic of Mercury's surface and download your own Mercury image mosaic at the U. S. Geological Survey Map-a-Planet website.