Date acquired: May 17, 2011
Image Mission Elapsed Time (MET): 214088550
Image ID: 261737
Instrument: Wide Angle Camera (WAC) of the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS)
WAC filter: 7 (748 nanometers)
Center Latitude: -68.49°
Center Longitude: 277.8° E
Resolution: 2834 meters/pixel
Scale: The radius of Mercury is 2440 km (1516 miles)

Of Interest: This view from the south highlights the rayed crater Han Kan (50 km), just to the north of Van Gogh (100 km). This image, acquired on May 17, 2011, gives a great sense of MESSENGER's elliptical orbit, where the spacecraft spends most of its time relatively far from the planet.

This image was acquired as part of MDIS's limb imaging campaign. Once per week, MDIS captures images of Mercury's limb, with an emphasis on imaging the southern hemisphere limb. These limb images provide information about Mercury's shape and complement measurements of topography made by the Mercury Laser Altimeter (MLA) of Mercury's northern hemisphere.

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.