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Bruce Murray Space Image Library

Mercury in color from MESSENGER

Mercury in color from MESSENGER
Mercury in color from MESSENGER As it departed from its second flyby of Mercury, MESSENGER snapped a color mosaic of the planet using its wide-angle camera; this version is a four-frame (2x2) mosaic of images captured through the red, green, and blue filters. Mercury's color variations are very subtle. This view consisted almost entirely of territory not previously seen from a spacecraft and included a spectacular set of rays radial to a small impact crater located near Mercury's north pole that was later named Hokusai. NASA / JHUAPL / CIW / color mosaic by Jason Perry