First Global Map of Mercury

SAN FRANCISCO — The first ever global map of Mercury was released here Tuesday at the American Geophysical Union meeting. The map combines new observations from the Messenger spacecraft with earlier images captured by Mariner 10 in the 1970s.

The U.S. Geological Survey built the map from 917 images of variable resolution and lighting conditions, but sophisticated software was able to match up planetary features from different images to create the near seamless mosaic.

Pretty cool. What else can I say? I will begin my search for Mercury's pyramids now. Never mind I'll let someone with more time do that as I know they will. Just wanted to share.

Source: Wired
High resolution pic of Mercury and a map of the newly charted territory. HERE

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Awesome post. Thanks!

Looks suprisingly like the moon?

Yes this is really Cool. I want to know where I can download the largest, highest resolution image of this released to the public.

Edit: LOL I see you added the larger pic.. but this is not the whole planet?

[edit on 16-12-2009 by JohnPhoenix]

reply to post by amazing

"The surprise is that it appears to be more volcanic than the moon," Zuber said at a press conference. "Very few people would have thought that before the first Messenger flyby."

source
Also really cool color pic in the link above.

reply to post by JohnPhoenix


I'm not sure if this is the latest, there are still a few gaps here and there, but it uses data from messenger. astrogeology.usgs.gov...

reply to post by smarteye


I clearly saw a letter "K" and lots of "O"s - someone's telling us it's OK! We should go!

Thanks for posting - very cool pics