MESSENGER probe is approaching Mercury.

[RVS]

The mission's site.

[LordFerret]

Question 5: What are the unusual materials at Mercury's poles?
At Mercury's poles, some crater interiors have permanently shadowed areas that contain highly reflective material at radar wavelengths. Could this material be ice, even though Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun? MESSENGER will find out.

This alone I would like to hear about. Same of our moon.

[RVS]

Animation of Mercury Flyby 1 Instrument Operations.

[selden]

There'll be a news conference tomorrow, Thursday, January 10, 2008, at 1 PM EST to preview the flyby that'll happen on January 14. See http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/news_room/s ... 09_08.html
for details.

[RVS]

[Hungry4info]

Are you sure that isn't a Venus image? O_o? I don't get it. For Mercury, it certainly looks very smoothe. The site says it's Mercury. I'm not very good at interpreting images

[t00fri]

Are you sure that isn't a Venus image? O_o? I don't get it. For Mercury, it certainly looks very smoothe. The site says it's Mercury. I'm not very good at interpreting images

Look at my Celestia images here

http://www.celestiaproject.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11888

notably this one:



F.

[JetCrow]

MESSENGER?€™s First Look at Mercury?€™s Previously Unseen Side
http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/gallery/sci ... age_id=129

[bdm]

Wow. Check out the cliffs on the terminator. How tall are they?

[chris]

Steve Albers has updated his 4k Mercury texture with date from this first MESSENGER flyby:

http://laps.noaa.gov/albers/sos/sos.html#MERCURY

--Chris

[ANDREA]

Steve Albers has updated his 4k Mercury texture with date from this first MESSENGER flyby:
http://laps.noaa.gov/albers/sos/sos.html#MERCURY
-Chris

Thank you, Chris, very interesting.
I could not resist , so I've modified it just a little, smoothing the edges, colouring the texture, and darkening the white
unknown area, and here is the result:



If someone likes it, you can find the 4k version I produced here:
http://ftp.tiscali.it/andrea_celestia/m ... 4k-mod.jpg

If someone wishes it, I can obviously make a 2k and/or png versions.
Enjoy.
Bye

Andrea

[symaski62]

[Chuft-Captain]

I've made an AltSurface addon based on Steve's updated map: DOWNLOAD LINK HERE

I could not resist , so I've modified it just a little, smoothing the edges, colouring the texture, and darkening the white
unknown area, ...

ANDREA, if you prefer your own modified map, I suggest you make a second copy of this addon, substitute your map(s), and give the AltSurface a different name in the SSC.

Then of course, you'll be able to switch between the two at will.

symanski,
thanks for the nice image. However, it might have been more informative to post the actual source of the image so we could read about it: http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/gallery/sci ... age_id=132



CC

[symaski62]

[symaski62]

[ANDREA]

Using Steve Albert's Mercury image updated 4/11/2008, I obtained a new,improved 4k texture,where I normalized the contrast among the many images, smoothed them, and colorized them once again.
The results IMHO look nice.
Here two examples, rotated 90° in Longitude, 0° - 90*
Other two in the forthcoming message.
Tell me if you like it, if yes I'll upload it somewhere.
Bye

Andrea

[ANDREA]

And here two more Mercury images, at Lat 0.0° Long 180° and Lat 0.0° Long 270°.
Bye.

Andrea

[ANDREA]

And here my 1k image compared with Steve Albert's 1k reduced original image.
I would like to read your opinion about this image contrast/luminosity, that I feel like needing to be rised a bit, do you agree?
Thank you.
Bye

Andrea

[ANDREA]

Some evidence of ancient volcanic activity, dipolarity of Mercury magnetic field, observations of charged particles in Mercury's unique exosphere: these are some very interesting news from Messenger's Mercury flyby on january 14th, 2008, described in a series of 11 papers published in a special July 4th issue of Science magazine, whose you can find a brief summary here:

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/03jul_mercuryupdate.htm?list15466

Eagerly waiting for next Oct. 2008 and following Sept. 2009 flybies.
FYI.
Bye

Andrea

[RVS]

September 29, 2008 Imaging Plans for MESSENGER’s Second Mercury Flyby