- The recent Mercury flyby showed a surface that to me
seemed to be radiating light from within like the back side of the moon
revealed after the front side had been hidden by NASA all these years.
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- like that lower right one
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- And maybe it's just because of Creating a false-color
image in this way accentuates color differences on Mercury's surface that
cannot be seen in a single-filter, black-and-white image. I'm just suspicious
of NASA with every justification, as the very first previous moon releases
were blanked out as quickly as possible.
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- MESSENGER's Wide Angle Camera is equipped with 11 narrow-band
color filters, in contrast to the two visible-light filters and one ultraviolet
filter that were on Mariner 10's vidicon camera. By combining images taken
through different filters in the visible and infrared, the MESSENGER data
allow Mercury to be seen in a variety of high-resolution color views not
previously possible. MESSENGER's eyes can see far beyond the color range
of the human eye, and the colors seen in the accompanying image are somewhat
different from what a human would see. Creating a false-color image in
this way accentuates color differences on Mercury's surface that cannot
be seen in a single-filter, black-and-white image.
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- This image shows the previously unseen side of Mercury,
with a view looking toward the south pole. The southern limb of the planet
can be seen in the bottom right of the image. The bottom left of the image
shows the transition from the sunlit, day side of Mercury to the dark,
night side of the planet, a transition line known as the terminator. In
the region near the terminator, the sun shines on the surface at a low
angle, causing the rims of craters and other elevated surface features
to cast long shadows, accentuating height differences in the image.
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- Just 21 minutes after MESSENGER's closest approach to
Mercury, the Narrow Angle Camera took this picture showing a variety of
intriguing surface features, including craters as small as about 300 yards
across. From such highly detailed closeups, planetary geologists can study
the processes that have shaped Mercury's surface over the past 4 billion
years. One of the highest and longest scarps (cliffs) yet seen on Mercury
curves from the top center down across the left side of this image. Great
forces in Mercury's crust have thrust the terrain occupying the right two-thirds
of the picture up and over the terrain to the left. An impact crater has
subsequently destroyed a small part of the scarp near the bottom of the
image.
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- Read more: Inside NASA's Mega Flyby of Mercury's Dark
Side (Update: New Pix!) - Popular Mechanics
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- Llan Starkweather
- llan@hughes.net
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