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Science observations during MESSENGER's first flyby of Mercury

Science observations during MESSENGER's first flyby of Mercury
Science observations during MESSENGER's first flyby of Mercury This animation contains 17 frames from a high-definition movie of MESSENGER's first flyby of Mercury. Blue squares show the fields of view of wide- and narrow-angle cameras at different times during the encounter (the wide-angle camera has a field of view 7 times larger than the narrow-angle camera). The full animation is available from the MESSENGER website in low and high resolutions (10.4 MB and 84.2 MB), covering the time from 2 hours and 40 minutes before closest approach to 1 hour and 45 minutes after closest approach, with time sped up by a factor of about 90. NASA / JHUAPL