Mercury

Image of the Day… Earth and Moon as Seen From Mercury !!!

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MESSENGER spacecraft sees lunar eclipse from Mercury

The MESSENGER spacecraft, now orbiting Mercury, caught the images to make this movie of last Wednesday’s lunar eclipse. See Earth and moon from Mercury!

Earth and Moon from Mercury orbit, with Moon entering eclipse. Imaged on Wednesday, October 8, 2014 by MESSENGER, a spacecraft in orbit around Mercury.

The MESSENGER spacecraft – which has been orbiting the sun’s innermost planet Mercury since 2011 – made this movie of the the Hunter’s Moon passing into the Earth’s shadow on October 8, 2014. The movie consists of 31 MDIS NAC (Mercury Dual Imaging System Narrow Angle Camera) frames taken two minutes apart from 09:18 UTC to 10:18 UTC on October 8. MESSENGER made the movie from a distance of 107 million kilometers / 66 million miles.

Notice the orientation of bright side of Earth. Earth’s shadow always extends in the direction opposite this bright side – or day side – approximately 1,400,000 kilometers / 1,000,000 miles into space. On October 8, the moon passed into the shadow, causing the eclipse.

The images have been enlarged 2 times and the moon brightened 25 times. The Earth was five pixels wide and the Moon one pixel wide.

The Earth – moon pair appeared in front of the constellation Aries, near the border of the constellation Pisces, as seen from Mercury.

The Earth was very bright magnitude minus 4.38 and the Moon was magnitude minus 0.03.

Read more from Emily Lakdawalla at the Planetary Society

Bottom line: The MESSENGER spacecraft, now orbiting Mercury, caught the images to make this movie of last Wednesday’s lunar eclipse. See Earth and moon from Mercury!

SOURCE:::: earthskynews

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Image of the Day… Crater in Planet Mercury …

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One of the sharpest images ever obtained of Mercury

This unnamed crater is only 1.5 kilometers / 0.93 miles wide. It’s made more visible by the deep shadows cast on a Mercury afternoon.

Very closeup look at planet Mercury. Image obtained on August 3, 2014, via NASA / JHU / APL MESSENGER spacecraft.

Here is one of sharpest images ever obtained of the sun’s innermost planet, Mercury. It’s a small crater within a 3.75-kilometer / 2.33-mile-wide area within the Hokusai Quadrangle in Mercury’s Northern Hemisphere.

What you see here is seen an unnamed crater only 1.5 kilometers / 0.93 miles wide in the hermean [Mercury] afternoon. The surrounding terrain and the crater profiles appear quite smooth, owing to many millions of years of thermal changes between the hermean day and night as well as micrometeoroids, ‘gardening’ the regolith.

The smallest craters and degraded ghost craters seen in this image are only 20 meters / 65 feet wide.

The bright streak within the crater is a cosmic ray strike on the MDIS NAC CCD.

On September 12, 2014. the MESSENGER spacecraft periherm – its closest point to Mercury – was successfully raised from: 24.3 kilometers / 15.1 miles to 94 kilometers / 58.4 miles, extending the mission further.

Periherm will be raised again on October 24, 2014 and once more on January 21, 2015, when the fuel on board MESSENGER is expected to be depleted.

MESSENGER is expected to impact Mercury on the weekend of March 28-29, 2015.

Source::::   in earth sky news

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