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Mercury’s Firdousi Honors the Persian Poet
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Caption:
The crater in the center of the image was named Firdousi in March 2010 in honor of Hakīm Abu'l-Qāsim Firdawsī Tūsī (940-1020), a revered Persian poet and author of the Shāhnāmeh, the national epic of the Persian people. MESSENGER imaged this crater at an oblique angle as the spacecraft approached Mercury for its third flyby. The view shown here is a cylindrical reprojection . Firdousi is notable for the distinctive chains of small secondary craters that radiate outward from the main impact site. That these chains of secondary craters can still be seen and have not been obliterated by subsequent impact events indicates that Firdousi is a relatively young crater on Mercury's surface.
Date:
September 29, 2009.
Instrument:
Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) of the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS)
Resolution:
500 meters/pixel (0.31 miles/pixel)
Scale:
The diameter of Firdousi is 96 kilometers (60 miles)
Projection:
This image is a portion of the
global Mercury
mosaic.
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 | Crater, Grayscale, Impact | |
| Acquisition Date | ||
| Release Date | 2010-07-20 | |
| Date in Caption | 2009-09-29 | |
| Image Credit | NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington | |
| Source | photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA13472 | |
| Identifier | PIA13472 | |
