Rays a Long Way from Home

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Caption:

Today's color image, which is similar to this monochrome view , contains part of the crater Soseki in the northwest. A scarp cuts through craters in the right side of the image, though it does not stand out in this high-Sun view. The bright band crossing from upper right to lower left is a ray from the crater Hokusai which is located far away to the northeast. Hokusai's rays overprint older craters and cover a large portion of the planet.

This image was acquired as a high-resolution targeted color observation. Targeted color observations are images of a small area on Mercury's surface at resolutions higher than the 1-kilometer/pixel 8-color base map. During MESSENGER's one-year primary mission, hundreds of targeted color observations were obtained. During MESSENGER's extended mission, high-resolution targeted color observations are more rare, as the 3-color base map is covering Mercury's northern hemisphere with the highest-resolution color images that are possible.

Date acquired: April 09, 2011
Image Mission Elapsed Time (MET): 210807763, 210807759, 210807755
Image ID: 108194, 108193, 108192
Instrument: Wide Angle Camera (WAC) of the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS)
WAC filters: 9, 7, 6 (996, 748, 433 nanometers) in red, green, and blue
Center Latitude: 36.39°
Center Longitude: 323.5° E
Resolution: 302 meters/pixel
Scale: The bright-floor crater in the upper left is about 32 km in diameter (20 mi.)
Incidence Angle: 37.5°
Emission Angle: 11.2°
Phase Angle: 48.7°

Background Info:

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 acquired 88,746 images and extensive other data sets. MESSENGER is now in a year-long extended mission, during which plans call for the acquisition of more than 80,000 additional images to support MESSENGER's science goals.

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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