Message #229167

[Mercury]

MESSENGER'S First Shot

Image courtesy NASA/Johns Hopkins/Carnegie

A spidery crater named for a French composer features in the very first picture MESSENGER took from orbit around Mercury, taken March 29 and released March 30.

Debussy Crater had been known since before MESSENGER's arrival, thanks to its brilliant appearance in Earth-based radar images of Mercury. But no spacecraft had seen Debussy in visible light until MESSENGER made a flyby on its way into orbit.

The new shot of the 50-mile-wide (80-kilometer-wide) crater is a composite of three out of eight images taken through different light filters. Combining images taken at multiple wavelengths can reveal changes across Mercury's surface, since different minerals reflect light in unique ways. A black-and-white version of this Mercury picture was released on March 29.

Published March 30, 2011