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PIA00437: Planet Mercury
The first image of Mercury acquired by NASA's Mariner 10 in 1974. Mariner 10's trajectory brought it behind the lighted hemisphere of Mercury in order to acquire important measurements with other instruments.
 Target Name:  Mercury
 Is a satellite of:  Sol (our sun)
 Mission:  Mariner Venus Mercury (Mariner 10) 
 Spacecraft:  Mariner 10
 Product Size:  2599 x 4878 pixels (w x h) 
 Produced By:  U.S. Geological Survey 
 Addition Date:  1999-06-12 
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA00437.tif (6.034 MB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA00437.jpg (1.056 MB)  

Click on the image above to download a moderately sized image in JPEG format (possibly reduced in size from original)

Original Caption Released with Image:

Mariner 10's first image of Mercury acquired on March 24, 1974. During its flight, Mariner 10's trajectory brought it behind the lighted hemisphere of Mercury, where this image was taken, in order to acquire important measurements with other instruments.

This picture was acquired from a distance of 3,340,000 miles (5,380,000 km) from the surface of Mercury. The diameter of Mercury (3,031 miles; 4,878 km) is about 1/3 that of Earth.

Images of Mercury were acquired in two steps, an inbound leg (images acquired before passing into Mercury's shadow) and an outbound leg (after exiting from Mercury's shadow). More than 2300 useful images of Mercury were taken, both moderate resolution (3-20 km/pixel) color and high resolution (better than 1 km/pixel) black and white coverage.

Image Credit:
NASA/JPL/USGS

Image Addition Date:
1999-06-12