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. Instrument: wide angle camera (wac) of the mercury dual imaging system (mdis)
of interest: the highest-resolution radar image of mercury's south polar region made from the arecibo observatory (harmon et al. , icarus, 211, 37-50, 2011) is shown in white on messenger orbital images colorized by the faction of time the surface is illuminated. Areas in permanent shadow are black on the illumination map. Radar-bright features in the arecibo image all collocate with areas mapped as in permanent shadow, consistent with the proposal that radar-bright materials contain water ice. This image is shown in a polar stereographic projection with every 5° of latitude and 30° of longitude indicated and with 0° longitude at the top. The large crater near mercury's south pole, chao meng-fu, has a diameter of 180 km.
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