Messenger Probe Sends Back Mercury Photos

arbitraryaardvark writes "NASA's Messenger probe flew past Mercury at a distance of 125 miles. The spacecraft took hundreds of pictures during the pass, updating photos from the now 30-year-old Mariner mission. According to an article at the International Business Times, the probe will eventually settle into orbit around Mercury in 2011. 'The images obtained by the $446 million MESSENGER mission (MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging) this week contain some of those unexplored areas. One image released Saturday was taken after Messenger made its closest approach to Mercury last week. In the photos released this week, scientists have observed unexplored cratered areas of the planet. On Monday, Messenger made its closest approach to Mercury yet, aiming for new discoveries. Among its goals is to discover if Mercury has ice water in its polar craters and to complete the mapping of the whole planet.' Meanwhile here on Earth, a joint EU/Japan probe with an ion drive is set to head towards Mercury sometime in 2013."

Re:Miles?

[Anonymous Coward]

125 Miles?? Have they not learnt their lesson over at Mars?

Its the 21st century damnit, and these guys are still in the 19th.

They report it in miles. NASA has already converted over to metric. In fact they were converted over in the 90s (though obviously not all subcontractors were). The only reason you are hearing this in miles is because the public affairs officials think you are too stupid to understand kilometers.

So close...

[PhotoGuy]

200km, wow! As a point of reference, geosyncrhonous satellites on earth are 36,371 km high, and the best resolution earth imagery satellites are at around 500km.

Re:Mercury = moon?

[Ruie]

Why does it look like the moon?

- very thin atmosphere

why is it in black & white?

- these cameras typically have no filters or can only shoot one filter at a time. This gives better sensitivity and resolution at the expense of being able to make simultaneous multi-spectrum shots.

Also take a look at this image [nasa.gov] - the scattering of pixels in the top left part if the picture is not dust on your monitor but actual stars as seen by the spacecraft ! I wonder if it is possible to find out from this when the shot was taken and where the camera was pointing.

Re:COLOR PHOTOS PLEASE? (patience)

[Tablizer]

I should note that the link I gave did not use color filters, but rather regular color photography, and stacked up several dozens in order to tease the color out. One advantage of filters is that you can capture more colors and wavelength range than the human eye can see. (Theoretically color film like that could be made, but it would be useless for consumer use, unless you are a bird or a fish.)
       

Re:Mercury = moon?

[carbon116]

I don' think those dots are stars. They probably wouldn't show up on a photos like this, especially seeing as Mercury is probably *very* bright because it's so much closer to the sun than us. I suspect there is actually a bit of processing going on the dim the photos to make sure they're not washed out.

I think it's either just noise from the camera, or possibly the effect of cosmic rays hitting the camera CCD. This is something that effects anything leaving Earth's protective atmosphere, and causes astronauts (especially Apollo astronauts) to see random flashes in their eyes as the cosmic rays hit the receptors at the back of the eyeball.

A bit of explanation here:
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mir_lights_030416.html [space.com]

Re:COLOR PHOTOS PLEASE?

[ianare]

From what this page [nasa.gov] says, these will be turned to color images later. They take the same picture at 10 different wavelengths then combine them to make a color image.

Re:Mercury = moon?

[4D6963]

I think they went with B/W images to actually get better results with the camera.

No. The NASA doesn't use cameras with Bayer grids (pixel-sized red, green and blue filters) as we have in normal cameras because they care about much more than just visible colours so they have an unfiltered camera and they rotate before its lens a bunch of filters that includes red, green and blue filters but also infra-red and ultraviolet as well as polarized filters. The pictures we see are in B&W because as of now they didn't yet put together pictures taken with different filters in order to produce true or "false" colour images.