Mercury -- Hi-res Image (IMAGE)
Caption
Just after MESSENGER's closest approach to Mercury (200 km above the surface), high-resolution color images of Mercury were obtained (500 meters per pixel). These images help to highlight compositional variations within the crust, both horizontally and vertically. At the center, a crater 68 km in diameter exposes the stratigraphy of the region. Material with higher reflectance and a steeper spectral slope (bright orange in this view) is exposed in the ejecta near the crater rim. This material was most likely excavated from a smooth plains unit that was buried by the lower-reflectance plains unit seen surrounding the crater. A portion of the crater's central peak exposes material that is lower in reflectance and has a shallower spectral slope (blue in this color scheme); this material was uplifted by the cratering process from a depth of as much as 10 km. Similar material that can be seen near the edges of the image represents the degraded rim and ejecta of an ancient basin.
Credit
Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Arizona State University/Carnegie Institute of Washington
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