The interior of Fonteyn crater, one of 23 newly named craters on Mercury, is shown here. Margot Fonteyn was one of the world's most famous dancers, dancing for the Royal Ballet in England for decades. Her namesake crater is one of the most recent impacts on Mercury; in this image you can see the sharp morphology of its central peak and impact melt that coats its floor, and in a past featured image you can see Fonteyn's rays that stretch far from the crater.
This image was acquired as a high-resolution targeted observation. Targeted observations are images of a small area on Mercury's surface at resolutions much higher than the 200-meter/pixel morphology base map. It is not possible to cover all of Mercury's surface at this high resolution, but typically several areas of high scientific interest are imaged in this mode each week.
Date acquired: February 02, 2012
Image Mission Elapsed Time (MET): 236702541
Image ID: 1345075
Instrument: Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) of the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS)
Center Latitude: 32.81°
Center Longitude: 95.58° E
Resolution: 17 meters/pixel
Scale: Fonteyn crater is 29 km (18 miles) in diameter
Incidence Angle: 62.0°
Emission Angle: 26.3°
Phase Angle: 35.6°
The MESSENGER spacecraft is the first ever to orbit the planet Mercury, and the spacecraft's seven scientific instruments and radio science investigation are unraveling the history and evolution of the Solar System's innermost planet. Visit the Why Mercury? section of this website to learn more about the key science questions that the MESSENGER mission is addressing. During the one-year primary mission, MDIS acquired 88,746 images and extensive other data sets. MESSENGER is now in a year-long extended mission, during which plans call for the acquisition of more than 80,000 additional images to support MESSENGER's science goals.
These images are from MESSENGER, a NASA Discovery mission to conduct the first orbital study of the innermost planet, Mercury. For information regarding the use of images, see the MESSENGER image use policy.
