Messenger Sends First Full Fly-By Image of Mercury

An anonymous reader writes with this snippet from Gizmodo: "NASA's Messenger (MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry and Ranging spacecraft) has flown by just 125 miles over the surface of Mercury, the closest planet to the Sun and the smallest in the Solar System. This is the first time in history that the whole planet is going to be photographed in its entirety by an Earthling probe, with amazing resolution and ultra-crisp detail." The picture at the top of the linked story is fantastic, too.

Gizmodo?? WTF

[Sir_Dill]

So what...we can't link to the projects website? we have to go off a gizmodo article?

Here's a link to the homepage for the messenger mission. http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/ [jhuapl.edu]

And here's a link for the flyby 2 page http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/mer_flyby2.html [jhuapl.edu]

Re:Highly Reflective Craters

[AJWM]

The light angle is probably part of it. Another factor may be crater age. On the Moon, more recent craters (and ejecta debris) is lighter in color than the older stuff, this may also be true on Mercury.

Freshness...

[denzacar]

From Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuiper_(crater_on_Mercury) [wikipedia.org]

Kuiper is a moderate-size crater with a central peak cluster located at 11 S, 31.5 W on Mercury.
It is 60 km in diameter and was named after Gerard Kuiper.
Kuiper crater has the highest recorded albedo of any region on the planet's surface, suggesting that it is one of the youngest craters.

Re:Grey?

[sighted]

Yes, the probe can take color images. The colors on Mercury are quite muted, though. Here's an example [jhuapl.edu].

Re:Colour images please

[Amigori]

Easy now. If you look at the details of the images, all of the pictures that have been release have been taken with the Narrow Angle Camera MDIS camera. Details here [jhuapl.edu]. The NAC takes black & white photos. In order to get color photos, the pictures need to be taken with the Wide Angle Camera.

IANARS, but I would think they are waiting until they are in orbit before they deploy the WAC, probably due to power requirements. I could be wrong though.