PIA11412: MESSENGER's Departing Shots


MESSENGER’s Departing Shots

Caption:

Click here for movie of PIA11412
Click on the image for the movie

As MESSENGER completed its second successful flyby of Mercury, the NAC took images of the planet every 5 minutes as it receded in the distance. In total, 124 images were compiled sequentially to produce this movie. At the start of the movie, MESSENGER was about 93,000 kilometers (about 58,000 miles) from Mercury, and the first image has a field of view of about 2,500 kilometers (about 1,500 miles) in width. At the end of the movie, the MESSENGER spacecraft was about 288,000 kilometers (179,000 miles) from Mercury.

Date Acquired: October 6, 2008
Image Mission Elapsed Time (MET): 131787760 - 131824960
Instrument: Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) of the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS)
Spacecraft Altitude: 93,000 kilometers (58,000 miles) to 288,000 kilometers (179,000 miles)

Background Info:

These images are from MESSENGER, a NASA Discovery mission to conduct the first orbital study of the innermost planet, Mercury. For information regarding the use of images, see the MESSENGER image use policy .

Cataloging Keywords:

Name Value Additional Values
Target Mercury
System
Target Type Planet
Mission MESSENGER
Instrument Host MESSENGER
Host Type Orbiter
Instrument Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS)
Detector Narrow Angle Camera (NAC)
Extra Keywords Grayscale, Movie
Acquisition Date
Release Date 2008-10-31
Date in Caption 2008-10-06
Image Credit NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington
Source photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA11412
Identifier PIA11412