Date Acquired: January 14, 2008
Image Mission Elapsed Time (MET): NAC image from
108830230 resampled on a topographic map made from more than 80 NAC and WAC images.
Instrument: Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) and Wide Angle Camera (WAC) of the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS)
Scale: Sveinsdóttir crater is about 120 kilometers by 220 kilometers (75 miles by 140 miles).
Of Interest: This graphic shows a portion of the fault scarp
Beagle Rupes cutting through the highly elliptical crater
Sveinsdóttir in a three-dimensional (3D) representation.
Standard 3D glasses (which can be assembled at home), with a red filter in front of the left eye and a blue filter in front of the right one, can be used to view this picture. By combining information from multiple images of the same portion of Mercury's surface taken under different viewing angles, the topography of the surface was determined. A high-resolution image was then overlaid on the topography map, resulting in this 3D image. In total, over 80 MESSENGER images were used to create this 3D view of Mercury's surface. As the MESSENGER mission continues, many more images will be acquired, and these additional images will provide views of Mercury's surface from a variety of illumination conditions and viewing geometries. These myriad views, anchored by topographic profiles to be acquired by MESSENGER's laser altimeter, will enable large portions of the surface of Mercury to be studied in 3D.
Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington/Planetary Science Institute
For information regarding the use of MESSENGER images, see the image use policy.