image: In this perspective view, we look west across a linear scarp that separates two terrains, higher topography to the right (mostly red and yellow colors) and lower topography to the left (mostly blue colors). The scarp is a tectonic feature formed by low-angle faults thrusting the now-higher topography over the area of lower topography, and is the location of one of the crustal magnetic signals. The scarp is about 30 km wide and several hundred kilometers long and the largest crater near the center of the image (superposed on the scarp) is about 30 km in diameter. The background image is Mercury Dual Imaging System global mosaic, colored by surface elevation measured by the Mercury Laser Altimeter (MLA), both draped over a digital elevation model derived from MLA data. This material relates to a paper that appeared in the May 15, 2015 issue of Science, published by AAAS. The paper, by Catherine Johnson at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, BC, Canada, and colleagues was titled, "Low-altitude Magnetic Field Measurements by MESSENGER Reveal Mercury's Ancient Crustal Field." view more
Credit: [Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington]