MESSENGER Image: Bright Rays of Kuiper and Dark Material Near Hitomaro

The rayed crater in the bottom left corner of this image is Kuiper. The crater Hitomaro, located to the east of Kuiper, has nearby dark material.

This image was acquired as part of MDIS’s color base map. The color base map is composed of WAC images taken through eight different narrow-band color filters and will cover more than 90% of Mercury’s surface with an average resolution of 1 kilometer/pixel (0.6 miles/pixel). The highest-quality color images are obtained for Mercury’s surface when both the spacecraft and the Sun are overhead, so these images typically are taken with viewing conditions of low incidence and emission angles.

Date acquired: April 5, 2011

Image Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington