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NANTES, France—NASA's Messenger spacecraft has been orbiting Mercury for more than six months, but that's all in a day's work, Mercury time. The orbiter has just passed its first Mercury solar day—about 176 Earth days—on the job, mission scientists reported here Wednesday at a joint meeting of the American Astronomical Society Division for Planetary Sciences and the European Planetary Science Congress. That's a significant milestone for Messenger's imaging campaign, because the orbiter has now seen almost the entire planet under similar solar lighting conditions.
The maps above represent two preliminary results from the observing campaign—a black-and-white map at high resolution and a false-color map at lower resolution. The false-color map displays 1,000-nanometer (infrared) light as red, 750-nanometer light (just on the border of red and infrared) as green, and 430-nanometer light (bluish purple) as blue. The few gaps that remain will be filled in during the second half of Messenger's one-year—or, if you prefer, two-Mercury-day—mission, the researchers said.
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6 Comments
Add CommentMercury is planet where is Albert Einstein, on the anomaly of perihelion prove own theory! Knowledge from ex century is not able to provide explanation for basic natural principals and situation is like 300 years ago, on the time of Isac Newton!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is not true!
New knowledge for new century!
Monochrome maps are just silly. Any horse's hindquarters who knows anything about digital image reproduction can apply proportional hues to NASA Mercury photos and get a glimpse of depth of field and details which all-gray simply obfuscates. There's a culture there, duh.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisKodak moments. Why not?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNASA has nowhere else to go. They're grounded.
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I love the second one!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiswww.freecommonlaw.us/images/plans/Mercury20D.png
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSee? Just a little increase in contrast can display a whole new set of characteristics. :)
Not to mention the prolapsed crater at the lower-right >;P
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this