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Date acquired: October 03, 2011 Image Mission Elapsed Time (MET): 226118011 Image ID: 837160 Instrument: Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) of the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS) Center Latitude: 50.65° Center Longitude: 319.8° E Resolution: 23 meters/pixel Scale: The partially shown crater has a diameter of approximately 30 kilometers (19 miles) Incidence Angle: 51.4° Emission Angle: 26.6° Phase Angle: 78.0°
Of Interest: MESSENGER's discovery of "hollows",
shallow, irregular depressions that are often bright in nature, is a
fascinating surprise, and this recently acquired image reveals yet more
occurrences of hollows on the floor and wall of a 30-kilometer crater.
Mercury's hollows often have a distinct color from the neighboring surface, and spectacular examples of many hollows that coalesced to form an etched appearance can be seen on the floors of Tyagaraja and Sander. Hollows are also found in more confined locations, like on the inner ring of Raditladi basin, a slumped crater wall, or the central peaks of craters. Learn more about hollows and how they may have formed by checking out this NASA ScienceCast entitled The Sleepy Hollows of Mercury.
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 250-meter/pixel (820 feet/pixel)
morphology base map or the 1-kilometer/pixel (0.6 miles/pixel) color
base map. It is not possible to cover all of Mercury's surface at this
high resolution during MESSENGER's one-year mission, but several areas
of high scientific interest are generally imaged in this mode each week.
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| Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington |
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