Messenger images 80% of Mercury

NASA's Messenger spacecraft has now imaged 80 per cent of the surface of Mercury following its second fly-past of the planet on 6 October, meaning that around 95 per cent has been revealed by various missions, the agency reports. Messenger view of Mercury. Pic: NASA During the latest close encounter, Messenger snapped 1,200 …

[Callum]

in other news

in other news, NASA scientists looking at images returned from Messanger are baffled by the clear outline of a dark coloured Opel Astra with a large object on the roofrack...

[Joe K]

CONFIRMED!

Mercury now officially most boring object in the entire solar system.

Seriously, is there anything interesting about that roasted little rock at all?

[Steve Hosgood]

Mercury - interesting?

Supposedly, Mercury has a liquid metallic core like Earth. Most of the other planets we've visited don't. This is believed to be the source of its magnetosphere. It might also give rise to plate tectonics if the mantle is thin enough. So far, human experience of both those situations is limited to observations on Earth. It would be useful to see it happening somewhere else in order to confirm or deny conjectures.

Whether those are the reasons that NASA wants to study it, I'm not sure.

[brainwrong]

Hemispheres!

"The previous flybys by Messenger and Mariner 10 provided data only about Mercury's eastern hemisphere. The most recent flyby gave us our first measurements on Mercury's western hemisphere, and with them we discovered that the planet's magnetic field is highly symmetric."

Eastern hemisphere?

Western hemisphere?

East/west relative to what? Does Mercury have a Grenwich meridian?

BTW, the red heart with possibly a face icon looks stupid.

And why does another icon warn of spiders hanging from a thread?

[John Dougald McCallum]

Its all relative

East/west relative to what? Does Mercury have a Grenwich meridian?

The Terminator or in other words the Sunlit side and the side that is in almost perpetual shadow.