The Caloris impact basin in false colours from the MESSENGER mission
The Caloris impact basin in false colours from the MESSENGER mission
On 15 November 2014, NASA's MESSENGER orbiter imaged the Caloris Basin, the largest impact structure on Mercury, using the MDIS camera system in various colour channels (centred at 31.5 degrees north latitude and 162.7 degrees east longitude). The mosaic is a colour composite overlaid on a monochrome mosaic. The combination of wide-angle and telescopic images enables the correlation of geological features with their colour properties. The Caloris Basin was flooded by lava, which appears orange in this mosaic. The larger craters have exposed weakly reflective material (blue) beneath the surface lava, likely providing a glimpse of the original basin floor material.
