A Hi-Res Mosaic of Mercury’s Crescent

(Before It's News)

A view of Mercury from MESSENGER’s October 2008 flyby (NASA / JHUAPL / Gordan Ugarkovic)

Every now and then a new gem of a color-composite appears in the Flickr photostream of Gordan Ugarkovic, and this one is the latest to materialize.

This is a view of Mercury as seen by NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft during a flyby in October 2008. The image is a composite of twenty separate frames acquired with MESSENGER’s narrow-angle camera from distances ranging from 18,900 to 17,700 kilometers and colorized with color data from the spacecraft’s wide-angle camera. (North is to the right.)

Click the image for a closer look, and for an even bigger planet-sized version click here. Beautiful!

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Read the rest of A Hi-Res Mosaic of Mercury’s Crescent (244 words)

© Jason Major for Universe Today, 2013. | Permalink | No comment |
Post tags: Gordan Ugarkovic, JHUAPL, Mercury, MESSENGER, NASA, planet, Solar System, water

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