A Colorful Mood

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Caption:

This image highlights some of the color features present on Mercury's surface, such as Low Reflectance Material (LRM) and crater rays. Visible in the top left quadrant of this image is the named crater Moody , which has a prominent orange color on its floor in this enhanced color image .

This image was acquired as part of MDIS's color base map. The color base map is composed of WAC images taken through eight different narrow-band color filters and will cover more than 90% of Mercury's surface with an average resolution of 1 kilometer/pixel (0.6 miles/pixel). The highest-quality color images are obtained for Mercury's surface when both the spacecraft and the Sun are overhead, so these images typically are taken with viewing conditions of low incidence and emission angles.

Date acquired: July 03, 2011
Image Mission Elapsed Time (MET): 218154838, 218154854, 218154834
Image ID: 456233, 456237, 456232
Instrument: Wide Angle Camera (WAC) of the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS)
WAC filter: 9 (1000 nanometers), 7 (750 nanometers), 6 (430 nanometers) as red-green-blue
Center Latitude: -30.86°
Center Longitude: 149.5° E
Resolution: 1712 meters/pixel
Scale: Moody crater is 83 km (~51.5 mi.) in diameter
Incidence Angle: 32.6°
Emission Angle: 0.5°
Phase Angle: 32.8°

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 .

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