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This video [available in three formats: 290 MB .mov, 78 MB HD .mp4, 25 MB SD .mp4] showcases a small sampling of the thousands of images taken by the spacecraft, as well as animations illustrating how MESSENGER moves in orbit and how its orbit has changed during the mission. For additional details of the animations and images in the video, visit this featured image.
Credits: Images and animation stills courtesy NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington. Music: "Mercury Ridge" by Simon Wilkinson (thebluemask.com). Video creation and time-lapse animations by Mark 'Indy' Kochte.
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This movie [ 23MB | 6.5MB ] shows Mercury's globe as it rotates. A global color map of Mercury's surface has been created by mosaicking thousands of sets of images obtained by the MESSENGER Wide Angle Camera (WAC). The colors shown here are related to real variations in the spectral reflectance across the planet. This view captures both compositional differences and differences in how long materials have been exposed at Mercury's surface. Young crater rays, arrayed radially around fresh impact craters, appear light blue or white. Medium- and dark-blue areas are a geologic unit of Mercury's crust known as the "low-reflectance material", thought to be rich in a dark, opaque mineral. Tan areas are plains formed by eruption of highly fluid lavas. The color base map shown here consists of MDIS images taken through eight different color filters. It is part of a global color map that covers more than 99% of Mercury's surface with an average resolution of about 1 kilometer per pixel.
Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington.
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This is a movie of Mercury's Rachmaninoff impact basin. An enhanced-color image has been draped over a digital elevation model of the surface. The vertical exaggeration is 7 times. The basin's outer rim is about 306 km in diameter and the inner (peak) ring is about 140 km in diameter. The volcanic smooth plains within the center appear tan in this presentation, emphasizing their compositional contrast with the dark, bluer rocks that form the peak ring mountains. Images from the Mercury Dual Imaging System on board NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft were processed to provide the color and elevation information used to create this view.
Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington/
Planetary Science Institute.
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Animation of the illumination of the topography of Mercury's north polar region, showing the small proportion of sunlight that reaches the Prokofiev crater floor and rim. The north-facing portions of the rim and interior remain in perpetual shadow, as do those of numerous other craters. The movie simulates approximately one half of a Mercury solar day (176 Earth days) and uses the digital terrain model derived from MLA measurements. Contrast has been enhanced for television display.
Credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center/Massachusetts Institute of Technology/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington.
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This movie shows 89 wide-angle camera (WAC) images of Mercury’s south polar region acquired by the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS) over one complete Mercury solar day (176 Earth days) in 2011. This dataset enabled the illumination conditions at Mercury’s south polar region to be quantified and the identification of areas of permanent shadow. Each image is shown in polar stereographic projection, extending northward to 73° S, and 0° longitude is at the top. The large crater near Mercury’s south pole, Chao Meng-Fu, has a diameter of 180 km.
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Click here to watch a visualization of measurements of sodium-group ion flux (blue) and magnetic field (red) during MESSENGER’s orbit on 14 April 2011. Sodium-group ions are measured throughout the entire magnetosphere, but they strongly peak near the magnetic cusps, where the magnetic protection of the planet is least effective. Measurements from more than 120 orbits were used to assemble a global picture of Mercury's three-dimensional exosphere.
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Click here to watch a movie that shows the locations at which energetic electrons were detected by MESSENGER between March 24 and June 3, 2011. In the coordinate system used (known as the Mercury solar orbital, or MSO, coordinates), the Sun is always in a fixed direction (here +X-axis). The events are well distributed in local time, but most are seen when the spacecraft is in the northern hemisphere. MESSENGER’s X-ray Spectrometer (XRS) responds to electrons initially with lower energies but in a manner analogous to the GRS.
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Click here to watch a movie that shows the location of Mercury’s magnetic equator determined on successive orbits as the point where the direction of the internal magnetic field is parallel to the spin axis of the planet. This magnetic equator is well north of the planet’s geographic equator (indicated by the horizontal gray line). The best-fitting internal dipole magnetic field is located about 0.2 Mercury radii, or 480 km, northward of the planet’s center.
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Click here to watch a movie that shows the MLA profiles acquired between 29 March and 24 May. Elevation along track (relative to a sphere of radius 2,440 km) is shown by the color scale. Note the broad area of generally low elevations in Mercury’s north polar region. The total range in elevation measured by MLA to date is more than 9 km. Orthographic projection centered on the north pole; the outmost circle corresponds to Mercury’s equator.
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Click here to watch a movie that shows the current monochrome imaging coverage as of June 16, 2011, centered at 240° E, and zooms in to highlight one of the many striking features seen during the first few months of orbital operations. At 9.0° S, 254.7° E, impact melt flowed from an unnamed, 13-km-diameter impact crater, extending outward more than one crater diameter from the rim.
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Click here to watch a movie created by compiling images taken as MESSENGER departed Mercury following flyby 2 on October 6, 2008.
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Click here to view an enhanced color movie created using images from MESSENGER's second Mercury flyby on October 6, 2008.
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Click here to watch an animation showing a zoom-in of MESSENGER¹s second Mercury flyby outbound magnetopause crossing, showing nine seconds of magnetic field data from October 6, 2008.
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Click here to view an animation illustrating how the Mercury Atmospheric and Surface Composition Spectrometer (MASCS) observed the tail region of Mercury's exosphere during the mission¹s second flyby of the planet on October 6, 2008.
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Click here to watch the movie created from images taken by MESSENGER as it departed Mercury after the flyby on January 14, 2008.
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Click here to watch an animation of the MESSENGER spacecraft flying through Mercury's magnetosphere on January 14, 2008, with the corresponding results obtained from the Fast Imaging Plasma Spectrometer (FIPS) instrument.
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Click here to watch a movie created from images taken by MESSENGER as the spacecraft approach Mercury and prepared for its flyby on January 14, 2008.
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Click here to watch a movie created from the optical navigation images taken as MESSENGER approached Mercury for its first flyby.
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Click here to watch MESSENGER depart Venus during its second flyby of the planet on June 5, 2007.
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Click here to watch the movie created from images snapped by MESSENGER as it flew by Earth on August 2, 2005.
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Watch the MESSENGER spacecraft successfully launch from
Cape Canaveral, Florida on August 3, 2004 (35 MB).
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View the final assembly stages of the MESSENGER spacecraft (20.1 MB) and its incorporation onto the launch vehicle (20.2 MB).
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Watch daily movies of the assembly of the MESSENGER spacecraft, from March 2003 until the launch in August 2004 (click here).
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