The Caloris impact basin on Mercury
The Caloris impact basin on Mercury
This mosaic of the approximately 1500-kilometre-wide Caloris basin is a colour composite overlaid on a monochrome mosaic. The colour mosaic consists of images captured by NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft in 2014. The individual images were acquired when the Sun was low in the sky, casting long shadows over the topography and making landscape features more visible. The Caloris basin was flooded by lava, represented in orange in this mosaic. Understanding the crustal structure of large impact basins and the study of differences in the gravitational field in large impact craters and their surroundings provide valuable insights into the geological history of a planet like Mercury.
Credit:
NASA/JHU-APL/Carnegie Institution of Washington