An Age of Magic

Marvellous Mercury

Dramatic new pictures have revealed the unseen side of Mercury in detailed images taken from a Nasa spacecraft orbiting the planet.Astronomers saw the “dark side” of Mercury for the very first time when the spacecraft flew within 125 miles of the planet’s surface and took 1,200 high resolution images.

The reason the solar system’s smallest planet is so elusive is due to its close proximity to the sun. The light from the sun makes Mercury difficult to see from Earth and when spacecrafts have flown close to the planet on previous occasions only one side has been bathed in sunlight while the other has been shrouded in darkness. 

The new pictures from the Messenger craft show features as small as six miles across on the planet which is 57 million miles away from Earth.

Among many new sights, the picture shows the full Caloris Basin, a huge impact basin more than 620 miles across that sits on the border between the known and previously unknown regions of the planet.  More unprecedented images of the tiny planet are expected as the spacecraft completes three flybys of Mercury before settling into orbit in March 2011. For so long we have viewed these magnificent astral neighbours of ours, to be able to see them in close up is just fantastic.

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