A Global View from Orbit: Nasa Messenger Image Gallery - Release Date 28 Oct 2011

Instrument: Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) and Wide Angle Camera (WAC) of the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS) Resolution: 2.5 km/pixel Scale: Mercury's diameter is 4880 kilometers (3030 miles) Map Projection: simple cylindrical Of Interest: The above image shows a global mosaic that covers over 99.9% of Mercury's surface! This mosaic is made primarily of MDIS images acquired as part of the surface morphology base map, which during the first six months of MESSENGER's orbital mission mapped over 98.7% of the surface with nearly 22,000 images. Variations in the morphological appearance of the surface are due to differences in the Sun illumination conditions and viewing geometries for the different images taken over those six months. In this mosaic, small gaps in the surface morphology base map have been filled by images taken as part of the color base map imaging campaign. A few remaining gaps have been filled by data obtained by a combination of Mariner 10 and MESSENGER flybys, most of which is visible near the north pole.

Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington