Illumination map of Mercury's south pole Chabot Fig2.large

Presented at: a press conference held at the 43rd lunar and planetary science conference, the woodlands, texas, usa. In total, messenger team members are presenting 57 papers at this conference. Scale: the large crater near mercury's south pole, chao meng-fu, has a diameter of 180 km map information: this illumination map is shown in polar stereographic projection, extending northward to 73° s, and 0° longitude is at the top of interest: shown here is an illumination map of mercury's south polar region. The map is colored on the basis of the percentage of time that a given area is sunlit; areas appearing black in the map are regions of permanent shadow. This map was created by using 89 wide-angle camera (wac) images of mercury's south polar region acquired by the mercury dual imaging system (mdis) over one complete mercury solar day (176 earth days). Radar-bright deposits, which may be water ice, collocate with regions of permanent shadow.