This image, taken with the Narrow Angle Camera (NAC), shows a simple crater within Rembrandt Basin. Running through the crater is a lobate scarp, formed as Mercury's large iron core cooled and contracted, generating compressive forces that pushed one section of the planet's crust over the top of another section. Determining the geometry of such scarps and the time periods when deformation occurred can help scientists to understand the thermal history of the planet.

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 250-meter/pixel (820 feet/pixel) morphology base map or the 1-kilometer/pixel (0.6 miles/pixel) color base map. It is not possible to cover all of Mercury's surface at this high resolution during MESSENGER's one-year mission, but several areas of high scientific interest are generally imaged in this mode each week.

Date acquired: February 05, 2012
Image Mission Elapsed Time (MET): 236961590
Image ID: 1357377
Instrument: Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) of the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS)
Center Latitude: -29.79°
Center Longitude: 83.26° E
Resolution: 184 meters/pixel
Scale: The large crater at the bottom of the image is about 59 km (37 miles) in diameter.
Incidence Angle: 57.8°
Emission Angle: 39.0°
Phase Angle: 78.2°

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 is scheduled to acquire more than 75,000 images in support of 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.