Water Ice on Mercury

This orthographic projection view from NASA MESSENGER spacecraft provides a look at Mercury north polar region. The yellow regions in many of the craters mark locations that show evidence for water ice, as detected by Earth-based radar observations from Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. MESSENGER has collected compelling new evidence that the deposits are indeed water ice, including imaging within the permanently shaded interiors of some of the craters, such as Prokofiev and Fuller. Instrument: Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS) Arecibo Radar Image: In yellow (Harmon et al., 2011, Icarus 211, 37-50) http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA19411

Date

2015-04-16

Photographer / author

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

Collection

JPL

Archive

NASA Image and Video Library

Type

photograph

Need photos for a whole script? Add Find Any Photo to Claude and ask for this one by its id: 23991.