Emily Lakdawalla • Oct 05, 2008
MESSENGER gets closer to Mercury

NASA / JHUAPL / CIW / Eric Landrenau
MESSENGER departs Mercury
This approximately true color view of Mercury was created by manipulation of the color space of the false-color official release from the MESSENGER team. The image was captured as MESSENGER departed its first flyby of Mercury on January 14, 2008. Caloris is a large bright basin in the top half of the image. Tolstoj is a dark-ringed impact structure, highly foreshortened at about 4:00 on the limb.Exploration Changes Everything
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