[FPSPACE] A Side of Mercury Not Seen By Mariner 10

[LARRY KLAES]

A Side of Mercury Not Seen By Mariner 10

Authors: Gerald Cecil, Dmitry Rashkeev (University of North Carolina at 
Chapel Hill)

(Submitted on 1 Aug 2007)

Abstract: More than 60,000 images of Mercury were taken at ~29 deg elevation 
during two sunrises, at 820 nm, and through a 1.35 m diameter off-axis 
aperture on the SOAR telescope. The sharpest resolve 0.2" (140 km) and cover 
190-300 deg longitude -- a swath unseen by the Mariner 10 spacecraft -- at 
complementary phase angles to previous ground-based optical imagery. Our 
view is comparable to that of the Moon through weak binoculars. Evident are 
the large crater Mozart shadowed on the terminator, fresh rayed craters, and 
other albedo features keyed to topography and radar reflectivity, including 
the putative huge ``Basin S'' on the limb. Classical bright feature Liguria 
resolves across the northwest boundary of the Caloris basin into a bright 
splotch centered on a sharp, 20 km diameter radar crater, and is the 
brightest feature within a prominent darker ``cap'' (Hermean feature 
Solitudo Phoenicis) that covers much of the northern hemisphere between 
longitudes 80-250 deg. The cap may result from space weathering that darkens 
via a magnetically enhanced flux of the solar wind, or that reddens low 
latitudes via high solar insolation.

Comments:  7 pages, 4 PDF figures, pdfLaTeX, scheduled for Nov. Astronomical 
Journal

Subjects:  Astrophysics (astro-ph)

Cite as:  arXiv:0708.0146v1 [astro-ph]

Submission history

From: Gerald Cecil [view email]

[v1] Wed, 1 Aug 2007 13:13:48 GMT (872kb,D)

http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/0708.0146