Your Weekend Dose Of Awesome: An Elliptical Crater On Mercury
Saturday, August 3, 2013 - 09:00
in Astronomy & Space
A color image, taken on May 1st, 2013 by the Wide Angle Camera (WAC) instrument aboard NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft orbiting Mercury, features the Hovnatanian crater, named for Armenian painter Hakop Hovnatanian. The crater's elliptical shape and the bright rays' butterfly pattern indicate that a very oblique impact produced the crater. The brightness of the rays indicate that they are relatively young features on Mercury's surface. read more