Mercury's hidden side imaged

Messenger flew by Mercury yesterday. The first images are online. This side looks different because of the *huge* rays emanating from Kuiper crater. Incredible!

PS. Mercury's other hemisphere was the biggest known unimaged region in the Solar System left...

jyril wrote:

Messenger flew by Mercury yesterday. The first images are online. This side looks different because of the *huge* rays emanating from Kuiper crater. Incredible!

Indeed! Here's some images that have come in.

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Quote :

PS. Mercury's other hemisphere was the biggest known unimaged region in the Solar System left...

It is?

I thought uriel or areil or some of uransus other moons were pretty much as unimaged as mercury was.....?

Yeah I was questioning that statement, too.

That side of Mercury was mapped in poor resolution by radar a while ago, like before MESSENGER passed Mercury for the first time.
Here's the paper.
A Side of Mercury Not Seen By Mariner 10

From the paper:





So before the MESSENGER flybys, the side had been imaged and crudely mapped.

Darkness nova wrote:

I thought uriel or areil or some of uransus other moons were pretty much as unimaged as mercury was.....?

Indeed, they were only half-imaged (Their southern hemispheres were imaged, but not northern, as it was they darkness). However the Uranian moons are small, and so the surface area of their unmanned side doesn't quite get up to the surface area of the side of Mercury that was accurately mapped like MESSENGER has done.

The surfaces of Pluto and Eris, I would think, probably have more unmapped surface area than Mercury did. (mapped being something a bit more meaningful than the albedo map we have of Pluto now).

The bright ejecta rays clearly visible in the Pre-MESSENGER map I posted above look like they might be the same craters just imaged by MESSENGER that are so prominent in these new flyby images.

Also it talks about a region, which I take to mean an area on a planet, not an area that is split between planets.

Not sure why you'd be willing to accept the "crude radar mapping" of Mercury and not the "crude albedo mapping" of Pluto as counting towards the mapped/unmapped scenario.

"Unimaged by spacecraft flyby/orbit" perhaps?

As for Eris...

Radius of Eris = 1300 km => Surface area = 21,000,000 km²
Radius of Mercury = 2440 km => Area of 1 hemisphere = 37,400,000 km²

Lazarus wrote:

Radius of Eris = 1300 km => Surface area = 21,000,000 km²

Oh blast, Eris was smaller than I thought it was, lol.

Steve Albers made a new map of Mercury.

scalbers wrote:

Following up on this placement, here is how a new test version of my map shows the Flyby 2 coverage. It's interesting how the previous radar coverage matches the Messenger images, such as in the multi-ringed crater near the upper left limb of the approach crescent image.

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?act=attach&type=post&id=16222

MESSENGER is in orbit of Mercury now.