A Crackin’ Good Time

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Caption:

Welcome to Zeami crater!

We've been here before , because Zeami has a plethora of interesting features - a portion of an inner peak ring , terraced walls , and hollows . But in the top left of this view, we can see something else on its smooth interior: long, narrow troughs, some of which are arcuate. These troughs may be graben , linear depressions that are fault-bounded. They may have formed here as they did elsewhere, the result of cooling and contraction of impact melt or lava within Zeami.

This image was acquired as a high-resolution targeted observation. Targeted observations are images of a small area on Mercury's surface at resolutions much higher than the 200-meter/pixel morphology base map. It is not possible to cover all of Mercury's surface at this high resolution, but typically several areas of high scientific interest are imaged in this mode each week.

Date acquired: September 06, 2014
Image Mission Elapsed Time (MET): 52296417
Image ID: 7009829
Instrument: Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) of the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS)
Center Latitude: 2.1° S
Center Longitude: 211.9° E
Resolution: 23 meters/pixel
Scale: The left-to-right field of view in this image is about 24 km (15 mi.) across
Incidence Angle: 77.7°
Emission Angle: 13.4°
Phase Angle: 64.4°
North is down in this image.

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. During the first two years of orbital operations, MESSENGER acquired over 150,000 images and extensive other data sets. MESSENGER is capable of continuing orbital operations until early 2015.

For information regarding the use of images, see the MESSENGER image use policy .

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