Mercury's colors

Mercury's colors
Mercury's colors The image at left represents a false color view of Mercury captured by MESSENGER as it sped away from its first encounter with the planet on January 14, 2008. The image is composed of three captured through filters with wavelengths of 1000, 700, and 430 nanometers (infrared, red, and violet), covering a wider range of the electromagnetic spectrum than human eyes can see. The image on the right is the same, but the saturation of its colors has been severely enhanced. The garish colors pick out interesting compositional differences across the surface. Fresh craters and their rays show up as bright blue. The Caloris impact basin appears deep orange, surrounded by a dark red ringl craters in its interior have deep purple rims. To the south, near Mercury's limb, a violet stain surrounds the crater Tolstoj, which, like Caloris, has an orange interior. These color differences hint at compositional differences, but exactly how the composition differs is not yet known. NASA / JPL-Caltech / CIW / Emily Lakdawalla