More from Mercury

[mmcirvin]

Hey, kids: Spot where this press release flatly contradicts itself in the space of seven paragraphs.

Actually, the cool thing mentioned here is the strange "spider" feature in the Caloris basin, which shows up nicely in this reprojected composite of MESSENGER and Mariner 10 pictures that covers the whole basin. (I apologize if these links to the MESSENGER site come up dead—they're really bad about having stable permanent links.) Photo releases continue to appear. A little while ago Emily Lakdawalla posted about some first science results and also put up an amateur attempt at an approximate "true-color" image. It looks more neutral gray than I expected, since the spectrum taken by MESSENGER showed that Mercury actually is somewhat redder than the Moon. But, as usual, the correct color balance for a fairly neutral astronomical image is somewhat ambiguous. It would certainly be interesting to see an official, well-calibrated attempt at this from the real data.

Comments

[jinni-x.livejournal.com]

Guh. It's a worthy challenge, but the writing is so bad that my eyes are glazing over.

Logic is a bouquet of pretty flowers that smell bad

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Mercury's magnetic field is startlingly different from what Mariner 10 found in 1974 in that it has not changed at all.

Spock: "I love you... but I hate you."

Identical android women: "But we are identical!"

Spock: "That is why I hate you. Because you are identical."