Comments on: Explore the Surface of Mercury

Explore the Surface of Mercury

SpringAquifer — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 14:37:43 -0800

NASA's MESSENGER team (previously: 1, 2, 3), with help from the U.S. Geological Survey, released yesterday the first global map of the planet Mercury.

The map stitches together images from MESSENGER's three recent flybys of the planet with those from Mariner 10, which saw about 45% of the planet in the mid-1970s. While a seemingly simple task, "the challenging part has been to make cartographically accurate maps from a series of images with varying resolution (from about 100 to 900 meters per pixel) and lighting conditions (from noontime high Sun to dawn and dusk) taken from a spacecraft traveling at speeds greater than 2 kilometers per second (2,237 miles per hour)." This map serves an "extremely important use as a planning tool" and signifies that MESSENGER "is no longer a flyby mission but instead will soon become an in-depth, non-stop global observatory of the Solar System's innermost planet." Also available to explore on the USGS's Map-a-Planet website: Venus, the Moon, Mars, Callisto, Europa, Ganymede, Io, Rhea, Dione, Tethys, Iapetus, and Enceladus.

By: Sys Rq

Sys Rq — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 15:24:36 -0800

Mercury looks suspiciously like a photocopy of someone's buttocks.

By: Think_Long

Think_Long — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 15:27:51 -0800

Mercury looks suspiciously like a photocopy of someone's buttocks. You're thinking of Uranus. Wow did you lob that one over the plate, I can't believe I felt the need to swing

By: porpoise

porpoise — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 15:39:11 -0800

Does anyone know if these maps has, lately, lead to any new geological insights on planet formation/etc.? Hmm, trying to get a large image (for, uh, SCIENCE! and desktop wallpapers) under the 'advanced options' I can't get it to generate anything bigger than 1202x609 regardless of what I input. Am I just doing it wrong?

By: Sys Rq

Sys Rq — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 15:43:44 -0800

The interface is indeed pretty head-scratchy. It'd be neat if they went for a GoogleMaps kinda thing.

By: SpringAquifer

SpringAquifer — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 15:45:01 -0800

Porpoise: trying to get a large image See here. It's a lot, lot bigger than 1202x609, though.

By: Quietgal

Quietgal — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 15:50:31 -0800

I must be doing this wrong. Mercury looks like it has a belt of severely cratered terrain running north/south, and the rest of the planet seems pretty smooth. That doesn't sound very likely, though - what gives? Also, it's kind of funny that the United States Geological Survey, which is part of the Department of the Interior, is geologizin' other planets. A rightwing fundynut dilemma here: mapping out future American interplanetary empire GOOD, science BAD.

By: SpringAquifer

SpringAquifer — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 16:02:28 -0800

Quietgal: I must be doing this wrong. Mercury looks like it has a belt of severely cratered terrain running north/south, and the rest of the planet seems pretty smooth. That doesn't sound very likely, though - what gives? See this image from this page. "The darker vertical regions to left and right of center are coverage provided by images near or at the terminator (low Sun). These areas required special processing to retain illuminated features that are otherwise eliminated at incidence angles greater than 90° when the photometric model is applied." They'll certainly improve the map when we get the opportunity to take more photos. But for now, we have images from only a handful of flybys by only two probes.

By: Joey Michaels

Joey Michaels — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 16:39:46 -0800

It'd be neat if they went for a GoogleMaps kinda thing I'll hold out for street view.

By: delmoi

delmoi — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 17:17:35 -0800

Google Mars. Also in elevation

By: cmoj

cmoj — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 17:29:14 -0800

Wow, I've been waiting for this since I was 13 in 1997. They even kept the original interface I dreamed of.

By: clarknova

clarknova — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 18:34:53 -0800

Quietgal: Also, it's kind of funny that the United States Geological Survey, which is part of the Department of the Interior, is geologizin' other planets. The USGS already has the has the web-interface software for dynamically serving landsat data. See here and here. NASA could either reinvent a costly wheel, or they could just pass the georeferenced imagery to USGS and let them plug it in to a preexisting web app. _{Though come to think of it, that's exactly the wrong argument to use on rightwingfundynuts.}

By: porpoise

porpoise — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 18:56:43 -0800

OooOOooo, thanks SpringAquifer - was trying to pull it from the Map-A-Planet site

By: newdaddy

newdaddy — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 20:32:46 -0800

By: The Whelk

The Whelk — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 20:58:47 -0800

Somewhere on this map you can find the "Spider", an unexplained (so far unexplainable) surface formation first seen by MESSENGER. I work at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab, in the Space Department, and there are pictures of it up all over the halls there. Some chain restraunts just never work out. Sad, I know. I used to love the late-burning-bright dinners at Ziggy Stardust's All You Can Eat Spiders From Mars. Bar And Grill

By: spaghettification

spaghettification — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 23:00:54 -0800

Mercury looks suspiciously like a photocopy of someone's buttocks. Complete with stretch marks.