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Munkácsy appears near the terminator, the division between the dark nightside and sunlit dayside of the planet, in this image taken during MESSENGER’s first Mercury flyby. Munkácsy originally had a double-ring basin structure, but most of the inner ring was buried when the basin was flooded with volcanic lava. Only a few remnants of the ring poke up through the lava, although low ridges in the lava seem to trace out much of the rest of the ring’s circumference. This small impact basin was recently named for Mihály Munkácsy, a Hungarian painter (1844-1900).

Date Acquired: January 14, 2008
Image Mission Elapsed Time (MET): 108828515
Instrument: Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) of the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS)
Resolution: 510 meters/pixel (0.32 miles/pixel)
Scale: Munkácsy is 180 kilometers in diameter (112 miles)
Spacecraft Altitude: 20,000 kilometers (12,400 miles)

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.